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After such a major overhaul, it was always inevitable that pundits would start suggesting Liverpool is missing some of the players it let go of in the summer.
No doubt you will have seen some of those shouts after Saturday’s defeat at Chelsea - the Reds’ third consecutive loss in all competitions. Some have made the case for Luis Diaz, but it’s Trent Alexander-Arnold who most seem to be pointing to at the moment.
Jamie Redknapp was the first to suggest Liverpool was missing it’s former No.66, before Gary Lineker joined in on the theory, and even suggested one player in particular might be missing him more than others.
"In terms of creativity, as much as anything else, I think they're really missing Trent," Lineker said on The Rest Is Football podcast. "Before that, sometimes Trent would go forward and they would, perhaps, get exposed defensively.
"But what he gives you going the other way, it's impossible to replace. There is not another player I can think of in world football who plays that position [right-back] in the way that he plays it offensively.
"I also think that Mo [Salah] is missing him, that connection that they had. Yes, sometimes they would get exposed in behind, but they would have someone try and cover that position - last season it was mostly [Dominik] Szoboszlai, previous to that would be Jordan Henderson.”
Such has the theory grown over the past week or so that it was posited to Virgil van Dijk at Stamford Bridge, with the Liverpool captain making the somewhat valid point that the Reds needed to move on, especially considering it was Alexander-Arnold’s decision to leave.
It is fair to say that Liverpool has struggled defensively this season, and that Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong haven’t made the best of starts to the campaign. But then, they’re not in an exclusive club in that sense, and there aren’t many players who can say they’ve hit anywhere near their best form so far.
And it feels too convenient an excuse to offer for Salah, who hasn’t been anywhere near the heights he hit last season. Anyone who saw him skying chance after chance on Saturday wouldn’t have been thinking of Alexander-Arnold as the solution to his problems.
In any case, Salah may have already revealed who it is he’s missing the most - Roberto Firmino and Darwin Nunez.
The former will certainly make a lot of sense to supporters. Firmino became something of a modern Liverpool legend during his time at Anfield, and he was part of one of the deadliest trios in Premier League history along with Salah and Sadio Mane.
Nunez might come as more of a surprise, considering most fans didn’t have any objections with him moving on in the summer after an underwhelming three years. But by Salah’s own admission, he was a fitting replacement for Firmino.
"Who do I most like to play with? It was Firmino. Now I feel like I generally like playing with Nunez,” Salah said last season.
Sensing the skepticism from his interviewer, Salah would go on to explain: "Nah, I like playing with him in general. [Nunez is] a player with different skills. Not a lot of people understand his ball."
As surprising as those comments might be, they do back up what Salah has already had to say following the arrivals of Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak.
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"So far I didn't figure the connections out yet," Salah said on the Men In Blazers podcast. "Like with Darwin or Lucho [Diaz] or the guys they used to play in front, or Diogo [Jota]. I knew where to start with Diogo or Darwin. I know where to find them. I knew their game very well but with Hugo he's still new."
That connection can’t have been helped by Isak’s late arrival in the summer, and the need to ease the former Newcastle striker in following what was far from a normal pre-season for him.
Salah isn’t having to adapt himself to one new striker, but two, and given the Reds’ hectic schedule, it’s rare that he gets the opportunity to play alongside one of them for more than a game at a time.
Hopefully, as Isak’s minutes increase, we will start to see more chemistry between Salah and his fellow frontmen, and in time, we will hopefully see the Egyptian king return to his former glories - and Liverpool can well and truly move on from Alexander-Arnold.
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