Liverpool change transfer tack again as surprise midfielder move should be anything but

Some unexpected possible exits have forced Liverpool into an awkward situation, but Jurgen Klopp could retrace proven steps to success with Cheick Doucoure.

Jurgen Klopp spent about as long explaining why he had sanctioned the loan signing of Steven Caulker as he did actually playing him.

After an in-depth rundown of the myriad issues blighting Liverpool’s central defensive ranks, the manager finally offered a constructive character assessment of his new arrival.

The positives, while hardly resounding, were threefold. Caulker could head the ball, was available and, in Klopp’s own words: “We looked for Premier League experience because in this short time, you need that experience.”

The centre-half added four more minutes of said Premier League experience to his CV during a quite bizarre short-term spell at Anfield. But Klopp established a certain taste for players who had at least sampled the English game before.

Klopp leaned on what he knew in his first summer transfer window, four of his five signings coming from the Bundesliga. But Sadio Mane was a phenomenal exception to a rule which was rewritten during 2017/18: five of his six signings in that campaign were from Premier League clubs, with former Chelsea forward Mo Salah the odd one out.

A team which reigned over both country and continent was formed around a spine of players bought from lower rungs down the ladder of the same division, but who had shown enough to suggest they could climb much higher and accompany Liverpool on their journey to the top. Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson, Georginio Wijnaldum and Sadio Mane were transformative buys treated with initial scepticism and doubt.

That immediately puts Cheick Doucoure in desirable company. The Crystal Palace Player of the Year’s name has been called as an apparent ‘shock’ Liverpool target who really ought to be anything but. The Reds have been forced into an awkward situation with unforeseen Saudi interest in two of their midfield leaders, and the Mali international would not ordinarily register too prominently on their radar. But a 23-year-old beaten for interceptions last season only by £100m Declan Rice, who ranked sixth for the highest percentage of successful take-ons (71.4%) while playing for a bottom-half club managed by Patrick Vieira and Roy Hodgson, is precisely the sort of uncut diamond upon which Klopp established his first Liverpool dynasty.

Doucoure has the Premier League acclimatisation Khephren Thuram, Florentino Luis, Sofyan Amrabat and Ryan Gravenberch all lack, the seasoning Romeo Lavia needs, the availability Kalvin Phillips requires and the sort of valuation Moises Caicedo resents. He is, in a sub-optimal situation, the best of all worlds for a Liverpool side scrambling for solutions.

He would not come particularly cheap – there is no reason for Palace to let him go for anything less than double the £21m they paid Lens last summer, and that is a conservative estimate – but for want of a less pervasive football phrase, Doucoure fits The Profile.

The potential shortlisting of Premier League players is nevertheless a welcome return to policy for Klopp. While 10 of his first 16 Liverpool signings had English top-flight experience, that was true for only four of his subsequent 19. In the four years since winning the Champions League, Harvey Elliott, Adrian, Diogo Jota and Fabio Carvalho are the only Premier League players the Reds have added.

An uncommon degree of upheaval in Liverpool’s transfer structure has perhaps coincidentally tallied with a shift to spending millions on players across Europe. Cody Gakpo and Darwin Nunez will benefit from more stability after periods of acclimatisation, but few would argue the Reds have reached their former level of omnipotence in the market.

The hope is that, even with those Saudi roadblocks placed on what used to be a serene pre-season road, the initiation of a long-overdue rebuild can restore some of that authority. Dominik Szoboszlai was an exciting signing born of circumstance, while the capture of Alexis Mac Allister represented a celebrated success in terms of finding immense value in an inflated midfield market – the sort which might charge exorbitant sums for a player of Doucoure’s skillset.

In marking off Mac Allister’s various strengths in his inside look at the transfer, the well-connected Paul Joyce of The Times managed to condense the world champion’s attractive virtues into one bite-sized paragraph:

Tactical versatility – check. High technical ability and intelligence – check. Goal threat – check. Strong mentality, Premier League ready, physically durable – check, check, check

It reads a damn sight better than simply being on the market and able to head a ball. But that fifth check was the most instructive, proof that Liverpool might try and retrace their own Premier League-proven steps back to the top.