Okay.
I hold my hands up.
I was wrong to suggest James Milner wouldn’t work at left back. I mean, can you blame me, or any other Liverpool fan, for thinking that?
One of our problem positions for countless years, what should have been one of our priorities for the transfer window and we end up with Milner come September. It didn’t exactly fill us with the greatest confidence going into the new season.
But again, I was wrong. It’s early days but he’s looking like a really good fit for the system that Jürgen Klopp wants us to play.
Considering we needed someone to replace or challenge Alberto Moreno, this looked like an ‘Oh he can do a job at least’ kind of move. But he’s had a very impressive start to the season and has arguably been the best left back in the league – on current form.
It may be a temporary solution and Klopp could be looking to keep Moreno out of the spotlight, but Milner is doing everything you could ask from a left back, both in attack and defence.
Take the Hull game for example. In the first few minutes, he won the ball in the Liverpool half with a crunching tackle to set the tempo. Right from the off, he’s showing the opposition that they’re not getting an easy ride.
We forget sometimes that Milner is actually a very clever footballer and he positions himself so well to react to oncoming attacks. He will get beat for pace sometimes, but that’s a natural part of the game, you have to take the rough with the smooth sometimes.
More impressively for me, though, is when he’s attacking. I said in a previous article that I think Moreno is one of the best offensive full backs in the league, and I stand by that, but on the attack, you can see Milner is almost reverting back to his senses as a midfielder, finding cute passes between the lines to Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino and then moving into dangerous positions.
He does come inside quite a lot, but when he doesn’t his crossing is superb. He’s the best crosser in the squad so his switch to left back makes even more sense. People will talk about Mané’s threat on the right-wing but we have a very potent threat on the left as well.
So far this season he has three goals and one assist with 88% passing accuracy. From a left back, six games into the league season, that’s impressive! Yes, you can say all the goals are penalties but any excuse to bring Penaltypool back in action!
He is 30 years old so it’s definitely not a long-term solution, but, for now, it’s proving to be a good move by Klopp and is another testament to his world-class coaching abilities.
This, more than anything, shows that Klopp knows way more about football than any of us could ever dream of!
