Thiago Alcantara has shown who Liverpool midfield three has to be next season

It’s always a special moment for a player when they score their first goal for a new club, and Thiago Alcantara became the 458 ^th man to find the back of the net for Liverpool when he scored in their 2-0 victory over Southampton at the weekend.

2020/21 has been a difficult campaign for the Spanish international. He was injured while the team was playing well and was only fit to return after Christmas once their struggles had begun.

Indeed, his personal points-per-match in the Premier League is 1.45, and no Liverpool player who has featured for at least 600 minutes has a worse record this season ( per FBRef ).

It will have pleased both the player and Jurgen Klopp that he was able to get off the mark before 2020/21 draws to a close, but there was so much more to admire about his performance against the Saints than simply his goal.

Thiago pressured opposing players 30 times, the joint-highest figure of his Liverpool career and second only to Mohamed Salah’s 32 in that match specifically.

He also played the most passes while being pressed (15), completed the most passes into the final third (nine) and made the most carries with the ball (52). It was a very encouraging effort all round.

However, while a player’s performance ultimately rests upon their own shoulders, it behoves their manager and teammates to do what they can to provide a platform upon which every player can thrive.

And while support from the players behind and in front of them are obviously relevant, it is the composition of the midfield which goes a long way to determining whether a player such as Thiago can have a good match or not.

Against Southampton, Alcantara and Gini Wijnaldum played either side of Fabinho, who was in his preferred position at the base of the midfield. It wasn’t the first time this trio have performed well together either.

Klopp has deployed a three-man midfield in 40 of Liverpool ’s 44 matches in league and Europe so far this season.

There have been 21 different starting combinations of three midfielders across those games, albeit that includes instances of three players taking different positions within the midfield in separate matches.

For example, the trio has been Curtis Jones, Jordan Henderson and Gini Wijnaldum from right to left in some games, but Henderson, Wijnaldum and Jones in the home match against Wolves.

The unit used against Southampton has also been seen in two other fixtures: the 2-0 ‘home’ win over RB Leipzig, and the 1-0 victory at Wolverhampton Wanderers in the game which followed it.

Three matches played, three matches won, and no goals conceded. The trio of Thiago, Fabinho and Wijnaldum is the only midfield Liverpool have used more than once this season that has kept a clean sheet every time.

This combination certainly seems to bring the best out of Alcantara.

The match at Wolves was another one in which he made 30 pressures, and his high watermark for combined tackles and interceptions (10) came in the second leg against Leipzig. Second on that list? Wolves away, with eight.

Those two matches are also two of the three this season in which Thiago has had more than a single touch inside the opposition penalty box.

These are only a couple of statistics, but they suggest he can defend better and get forward more often when accompanied by Fabinho and Wijnaldum.

The former of that duo seems to hold the key. Liverpool’s number three and Thiago have started five matches together in midfield, with the Reds winning four and drawing the other.

James Milner was their companion for the 3-0 win at Arsenal, while Jordan Henderson took the third spot in midfield for the 2-2 derby draw with Everton at Goodison Park.

You won’t have forgotten that the skipper looked to have won that match prior to a VAR intervention, and his ‘goal’ owed a lot to a sublime defence-splitting past from Thiago.

The disrupted nature of Liverpool’s 2020/21 season means that the sample sizes for all of the midfield trios have unfortunately been too small to prove anything of significance.

But from what we have seen it seems that Thiago and Fabinho plus one other midfielder needs to be the first-choice trio for Klopp next season.