Trent Alexander-Arnold Will Be Missed, and He Will Not Be Missed

Different footballers can do different things

I often joke that whenever I try to take any time off at all, a big story breaks. Maybe that’s as big stories break all the time these days. (At least Real Madrid waited until after my mum’s funeral.)

I didn’t think a transfer story could break in late March, but it seems that Real Madrid are increasingly confident of landing Trent Alexander-Arnold, as of bold headlines from the past day or two, that have gone beyond mere rumours.

No one quite plays right-back like Alexander-Arnold, but his is not the only way to play right-back.

Part of the issue with him has been that it’s a risk/reward equation, and it doesn’t always work; albeit nothing always works.

He’s unique, but in overall terms I feel that Conor Bradley could be even better.

I’d love for Trent to stay, but it feels like that ship has sailed. And I can live with that, as regular readers will know, I’ve spent three years saying that Bradley is the future.

Using FBRef’s Opta data, I created the radars below, with stats, as ever, only telling part of the story, with the percentiles comparisons against right-backs in the top five leagues.

For Trent, everything is around elite high-risk passing that fails more than it succeeds (as with others, like Kevin de Bruyne even in his peak), but when it succeeds it’s like taking the ball from your own half and placing it on the floor in front of a striker in the opposition box.

• Passes Attempted, 98th percentile

• Pass Completion %, 22nd percentile

• Progressive Passes, 99th percentile

But Bradley, whose defensive numbers are superior, it’s about running with the ball, and running off the ball:

• Progressive Carries, 98th percentile

• Touches (Att Pen), 99th percentile

• Progressive Passes Received, 82nd percentile

It’s interesting that Bradley averages three times as many touches in the opposition area as Alexander-Arnold, just as he receives almost twice as many progressive passes.

And remember, we’re comparing a guy in the peak years against one who is only just emerging.

I genuinely think that Bradley is potentially more well-rounded as a player, and definitely not “injury prone”. While I spotted the trend just before I read stats about it, younger players are suffering way more injuries than before. All players are suffering, but younger players are not as robust yet. (Just think of the younger Steven Gerrard and Ryan Giggs, and how they overcame frequent issues to have long careers.)

With Bradley, a lot have been the standard growing pain issues that tend to go away by age 22/23, when fully developed. Also, Arne Slot’s medical staff will help to reduce muscle injuries. Here’s his injury record from Transfermarkt:

Bradley’s age-related stress fracture of the spine came as a result of playing a full season for Bolton, where he won every player of the year award. As the medical websites say:

“Back fractures, especially stress fractures in the lower back (spondylolysis), are common in teenagers, particularly athletes, due to repetitive stress from sports like gymnastics, football, and weightlifting.”

(I was found to have double spondylolysis a couple of years ago, that may have been the result of playing so much sport as a kid.)

Trent has also had quite a few injuries in the past 20 months or so, so it’s not as if he’s available 100% of the time either.

Those injuries last season helped Bradley to establish himself; and while younger at the time, after Alexander-Arnold usurped Nathaniel Clyne, there were times after that where the role was shared with James Milner, if memory serves.

I’d like to see TAA (when did the triple initials of footballers and managers become essential?) get a good send off, but it feels like he’d already had his head turned by Real Madrid before this season. That happens.

Madrid is like an elite club for egos, with its Big Jude Energy. We thought Trent might bring his best mate Jude to Liverpool but now it seems it’ll be the other way around. (Liverpool didn’t do so bad in investing the money set aside for Bellingham on a whole new midfield.)

If you’re concerned with such things, it’s the apex. It’s probably the most glamorous club in the world, but also overrun with superstars at times, to its own detriment. Bellingham, a brilliant talent, seems increasingly less humble. That’s a warning sign, for what teenage superstardom can do to a sense of self.

It’s also a new challenge for Alexander-Arnold, and again, that’s fine for a player who has won literally everything with Liverpool, and who may fear going stale.

(Indeed, Reds leaving to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona is not new, as it’s been happening for 25 years; but if it doesn’t work out, which English club would Alexander-Arnold return to? It won’t be Liverpool if he leaves on a free and the team moves on without him. That could be the weirder thing to deal with, for him and for us.)

For me, the perfect unhelpful storm of 2023, when successive directors of football had quit in part because – as almost always happens when managers become über-successful – Jürgen Klopp was gaining more control (after winning everything), and then struggling to handle what he was taking on (and later in the year announced he would be leaving, having first thought about it during the early days of 2023 as the team looked old and leggy), was a bit like the pandemic, and how contracts were harder to renew, as no one knew when the chaos would end.

(Similarly, you now have a situation with Ibrahima Konaté who wasn’t getting in the team last season, so his contract renewal was not as obvious a priority, and there wasn’t anyone to take care of it initially anyway; now he’s better than ever, but in 2023/24, Jarell Quansah, who has all the ability to become elite when he ages into the peak years, was preferred. I’d certainly try and keep Konaté even if he doesn’t sign a new deal, to limit the churn in the summer.)

For a while, the club was a total mess in 2023, with talk of the owners selling – perhaps as everything seemed to be unravelling – and it’s a testament to how everyone rallied together to see out Klopp’s tenure with a proper regeneration of the squad (which included the emergence of Bradley), and the departure of an exhausted Klopp (who had successfully overhauled the team) meant the return of Michael Edwards, who had been somewhat sidelined after the massive success of 2018-2020.

Edwards could bring not only stability and the old know-how, but in Richard Hughes, the man who helped choose and facilitate the move for Arne Slot. The collateral damage of 2023 was the drifting of contracts, but Liverpool had no idea who would be doing what job, and as they drifted back into the Europa League.

If you told people at the start of 2024 that Klopp would leave, and Liverpool would be 99% certain of the league title in 2025, they’d find it hard to believe; but say that to them in the spring of 2023, and it would seem impossible.

The result, now, is a likely 20th league title, and almost certainly losing the Reds’ no.66.

Seeing as Liverpool have just one league title in the past 35 years, but in that time have lost, or had little choice but to sell, Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez, Philippe Coutinho and Sadio Mané, amongst others who “can never be replaced”, all while still in their 20s, then to me, the loss of great players is not to be feared in relation to the rarity of winning the title since 1990.

Great players come and go; for now, league titles still remain rare, and to be savoured.

While it’s not always ideal, it’s also worth praising the club in general for keeping players to the end of their contracts, if it helps win things or qualify for the Champions League, and players have got warm send-offs at Anfield for their efforts.

I waved a fond farewell to Gini Wijnaldum in 2021, as one of only 10,000 people allowed into Anfield in the era of social distancing after a season of empty stadia, with the Reds having revived their season to finish 3rd. (Alisson’s headed goal that season resulted in nothing concrete, no trophy, but it’s a moment that’s up there with the best I’ve known.)

Everyone said it was stupid to let Gini go, despite his age. Now, Liverpool’s midfield is better than ever, and perhaps younger than ever.

Indeed, I assume, off the top of my head, that you have to go back a long way to find the four main choices being aged 22, 24, 24 and 26, and all of them being this good. Maybe you go back to c.2004/25, with Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso, in a team that had an amazing spine up until 2009, but where it never got close to matching the current one in wider areas. Mo Sissoko came in aged 22, looked great, but then suffered a bad eye injury. He was replaced by Mascherano, 23 at the time, but by 2007, Gerrard was 27 and Alonso 26. That was still, however, the best midfield in the world.

While it has seemed increasingly likely that Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah will stay, given they have defied the ages on their passports and proved their brilliance, were they also to go, after leading Liverpool to the title, then that wouldn’t be so bad if you thought that, at best, Liverpool were seen as outsiders for the top four this season.

(There have been no clubs linked with van Dijk and Salah in the way Real Madrid have been with Trent. It wasn’t even clear if Liverpool would be in the Champions League next season, as of the summer of 2024, and the club will always plan around reality, not wild punts and pipe dreams.)

Also, if you were offered Slot winning one league title in his first three years you’d have taken that in a heartbeat. But if it’s achieved in Year One, then expectations are ramped up.

This was, and still is a transitional season, but next season may now be one too.

Again, you’d take that, unless you get greedy; and that doesn’t mean the team has to fail. It may just need a bit of a readjustment.

Indeed, this team, for all its brilliance, has a few weaknesses that would have been addressed regardless, such as an overall lack of pace (especially in all four wide positions), the lack of an ideal centre-forward (who is both fast and intelligent), and an ageing Andy Robertson is not the left-back he used to be.

Bradley would help add more pace to the team, for starters. I like the energy he brings.

Moving Forward

Whether or not Liverpool need a new signing as well, we’ve seen that Quansah can do the job of backup, where he’s not as good going forward in terms of panache and wing-play, but does progress the ball well with driving runs, as he’s a mobile, ball-playing centre-back who can adapt.

(I would never bank on Joe Gomez’s fitness, but as I’ve said before, if he stays, he’s always handy for parts of a season. The brief resumption of his 2019/20 central defensive partnership with Virgil van Dijk should not be forgotten if/when Liverpool win the title this season. He came into the side for the 2-0 home win over Manchester City, and his run of games included a valuable point away at Newcastle, in the toughest period of the season. He was in the team for the 6-3 win at Spurs and the 5-0 win at West Ham, when he went off injured with the team 1-0 up.)

Quansah has hardly played there enough to know the ropes, but seems a great option (especially in games where you want to be a bit more conservative), and should not be judged in games like the League Cup final, where Liverpool were ragged and jaded, and Mo Salah was fasting, and almost no one had a good game.

To use that as an example of anything would be like saying Mo Salah isn’t very good, or indeed that Liverpool just aren’t very good, when that’s one game in a long season that has proved the contrary.

Quansah is nowhere near the finished article as a footballer, centre-back or full-back, but is in the England squad, having just turned 22. That’s a great sign.

(I also retain high hopes for Stefan Bajčetić, still only 20, and someone who can play right-back as well, and who is getting back to his best on loan in Spain. Again, so many teenage injuries, but he can grow through that.)

Bradley turns 22 in the summer.

On average, and excluding teen freaks like Wayne Rooney or Romelu Lukaku, players start to peak physically at 23. Beyond getting more experienced, wiser and just improving skills, everyone can usually get faster, stronger and gain more stamina after that point, and move beyond growth-related injuries.

(All world records for athletic achievements tend to be for men aged 23 and above, and the fastest times for various events average out in the 23-30 range, with strength and stamina generally peaking later than sprinting.)

Bradley already has great pace but can get stronger and faster. He has amazing stamina, and I think stamina is a huge part of what Slot needs, as players have to get forward and get back.

Trent passes the ball like a god, but Bradley is about penetrating runs, and is a better defender. If Salah stays, Bradley’s extra pace and energy could help on that flank, as Salah conserves his energy and finds space.

(Salah’s energy appeared to fall off a cliff once fasting, or it could just be he’s hitting a bit of a wall after playing so much football this season at his age, but also having previously looked like he can play every minute, given his insane physical conditioning.)

Bradley also makes thumping tackles that means he helps the team in duels – when at times too many players lack that quality – and gets into the opposition box like a midfielder.

Big thumping tackles still get a crowd roused up, and at times I think Liverpool are on the end of far more than they dish out. To not be physically bullied as much will help, as Liverpool are a big, strong team, but not the best at 50-50s.

When you play a team like Newcastle or Everton, they seem to get away with piling in on the Reds, and Bradley is one of those who isn’t afraid to go in properly hard (which can increase the risk of red cards, but sometimes you need to meet fire with fire).

I think Bradley has more of a ‘warrior’-like attitude, a bit of the Steven Gerrard about him, where Trent is quite weak in the tackle (but has got better this season at nicking the ball away). Unlike Bradley, TAA has Gerrard’s passing range.

Had Trent also had Gerrard’s physical power and drive, then he could have become his equal, and may never have moved from midfield as a teenager.

An issue I often had with Trent was at times he’d look leggy, and lazy, and half-hearted (at times this was a harsh judgement, at others it seemed fair).

But few defenders have ever made the ball do quite as much of the work, in how he’d ping it 60 yards to feet.

Along with Virgil van Dijk, this allowed the Reds to spring quick counterattacks, like having two quarterbacks in defence. That outlet will be missed, but I expect fewer accusations of Bradley being lazy, and Liverpool can be a more intense team with him in the XI.

I also think Bradley will score a lot more open-play goals in time, as that’s what he did on loan as a young player, and does for his country.

His touches in the opposition box suggest that’s possible. He’s not as ‘gifted’ as Trent, but who is? However, the team can perhaps evolve more with Bradley, who is much younger, and whose best years are ahead of him.

His assist for Dominic Szoboszlai against Spurs in the cup semifinal was a gem of a touch that any player in world football would have been proud of.

Indeed, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a ‘simple’ pass quite like it, in terms of how he seemed to be running to control the ball and just passed it, first time, by adjusting his stride.

As seems almost inevitable now, losing a talent like Alexander-Arnold for free stings, but as much as I find aspects of Real Madrid’s Galácticos approach annoying, you also can’t really begrudge anyone who wants to go there, especially when they are beyond their mid-20s and have won everything with your club.

Indeed, go back to his debut in 2016, and think: this guy, with Liverpool, will win two Premier League titles (as seems likely), play in three Champions League finals (winning one, unlucky in two), as well as winning the FA Cup, League Cup, Club World Cup and European Super Cup, then we’d have all felt he more than deserved a move to Spain. In that sense, I wish him well, except in the Champions League.

And perhaps Liverpool can move on now, without the tiresome noise around him (that in part comes with his England career).

Bradley has had to be a bit more patient, and did not reach superstar status in his teens, working hard in the lower leagues on loan; and may never have to carry the weird weight of being Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Bradley may have to carry the weight of replacing him, but he’s already been eased into that role over the past two seasons. Gradually, he has adapted to what is required. It won’t be a shock. He won’t be overawed.

At times in the future, people will say Liverpool needed Trent, but if the team does well, it will be forgotten, even if he won’t.

Liverpool will likely have plenty of money to spend this summer, but can save a lot if Bradley overcomes his growth-related injuries, as should be more likely once he turns 22, and develops into the best all-round right-back in the world.

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My previous article:

Great Football Teams Who ‘Just’ Win the League Lose or Draw Lots of Football Matches