I never thought I’d say this, but I’m quite excited about this season’s Europa League competition.
Although we’ll miss out financially (it’s not like we spend the money generated from the Champions League anyway!) and in terms of the glamorous ties this club is associated with, it may have a long-term benefit to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool 2.0.
Firstly, Klopp has the genuine ability to rest his best players mid-week for the entire group stages.
No disrespect to LASK, Union Saint-Gilloise and Toulouse, but if we can’t beat those teams with our squad players then we’ve got bigger worries than what happens in Europe.
In the past six seasons, in which Liverpool have always been in the Champions League, there is no letup. The best XI starts in the Premier League and barring a few changes for injury and fatigue, the same lads go again midweek. And given how we’ve consistently been rivals to Manchester City, every game feels like a must-win from September onwards.
While that remains the case in the Premier League, the likes of Alisson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah can expect the week off in terms of match participation before going again at the weekend, fully charged. It’ll make a big difference to their form, fitness and ability to fight down the home-straight, especially as we’re hoping to be involved in something exciting domestically come the end of this season.
On top of this, it gives Klopp an opportunity to blood a number of young talents. The group stages provide six guaranteed matches for the likes of Caoimhín Kelleher, Ben Doak, Stefan Bajcetic and Jarell Quansah.
On top of those names, we will get to see deserved starts for the squad players who so far have struggled to assert themselves as starters, such as Harvey Elliott, Kostas Tsimikas and Joel Matip. New signing Ryan Gravenberch is guaranteed minutes, too, in a less pressurised environment. The reason I say this is if something strange happened and we didn’t make it out of the group, or lost in the Round of 16, it doesn’t really matter. It just means less games to play and less tired legs at the end of the Premier League campaign. Arsenal benefited from this last term massively. Obviously, if we’re in a competition, we want to win it, but much like the League Cup and even FA Cup nowadays, you only need to use your best players towards the end, perhaps from the quarterfinals onwards. It expends less legs and gives everyone minutes.
We have a big squad nowadays and the Europa League will help keep them all happy.
I’d like to see Liverpool line up something like this on Thursday, when we are annoyingly kicking off at 5:45pm:
Kelleher; Gomez, Matip, Quansah, Tsimikas; Endo, Gravenberch, Elliott; Doak, Jota, Gakpo.
Then, Bajcetic can feature off the bench, given he’s 18-years-old and hasn’t played for five months. There’s also youngsters like Bobby Clark and Melkamu Frauendorf who are candidates for minutes off the bench if we’re in a winning position. This is before even mentioning Thiago, who will hopefully come back and provide the classy moments that have seen him recognised as one of the world’s best midfielders over the past decade.
By fielding an XI like this on Thursday, we can go back to full-strength versus West Ham at the weekend:
Alisson; Trent, Konate, Van Dijk, Robertson; Mac Allister, Jones, Szoboszlai; Salah, Diaz, Nunez.
It’s unlikely Klopp will make XI changes and I’ve got this spot on, but expect to see something similar. How much will our starters benefit from a week’s rest after the gruelling international break? Hopefully quite a bit.
It’s really nice having that feeling when you’re genuinely excited about watching the Reds again. Last season, it went away, but the fight and desire they’ve shown early on to come back from a goal behind on three occasions to win, has relit the spark for everyone.