Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard has suggested his former club need to strengthen in midfield amid speculation growing over Alexis Mac Allister's future.
Despite the club's blockbuster transfer window in 2025, Arne Slot failed to build on a title win in his debut season. Even with Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak arriving for a staggering £450 million, they struggled and frustrated as the club finished fourth.
Top managers and pundits alike often say that it's best to strengthen when you're at your best, which is what Liverpool thought they had done in the summer of 2025, but it just didn't work out quite like that.
Securing a top five finish and a Champions League place was largely aided by clubs around them in the Premier League table floundering worse than them towards the end of the season, but that still wasn't enough for Slot to keep his job.
Steven Gerrard tells Liverpool to sign a 'powerhouse'
Fast forward to now and it seems that Andoni Iraola is slowly starting to find some stability as Liverpool have still only lost once this season, a 3-0 defeat to Manchester City heavily impacted by Ryan Gravenberch's red card. The Spaniard has led the Reds to eight wins, three draws and one loss across all competitions so far this season, but there is certainly still a lot of work to do and areas of the pitch that could be improved.
This past summer, the Merseyside outfit spent far less than they did over a year ago when they brought in Bradley Barcola, Jeremy Jacquet, Victor Munoz and Ronald Araujo and they've all made a solid impact thus far.
However, there had been calls last season for Liverpool to bring in a top class central midfielder during the summer transfer window as Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister were far below their 2024/25 seasons last campaign. To add to that, Curtis Jones moved to Inter Milan in the summer and Dominik Szoboszlai was arguably the one player that didn't really have a dropoff last season from what he showed in the title-winning season. Likewise, Trey Nyoni has shown plenty of promise so far this season, but it's not expected of him to be the leader in the center of the pitch as of yet.
In a recent episode of The Overlap Daily, Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard explained how he truly feels Liverpool still need to try to bring in a stalwart center midfielder to help make the squad more complete.
"I still think, moving forward, and Iraola might disagree and some Liverpool fans might disagree, Liverpool miss a real strong powerhouse in the middle of the team. Someone who holds the middle of the team and stops people playing through them and puts a lot of fires out, like a Fabinho, for example. A Dietmar Hamann."
"I played with that type, who worry about the other side of the game. When everyone's thinking attack, or let's go and create and be obsessed with scoring, you have a clever one in the team, like a Rodri, who goes; 'No, no. If this goes wrong or the balls turns over, we need to fix a different problem.' I think Liverpool lack that. Mac Allister's good, but I don't think he's top at that."
Who's The Real Number Six At Liverpool?
For what it's worth, Gerrard does have a point and large portions of fans would tend to agree. While the club have started off this season far better than they ended the last, they've still conceded 16 goals across all competitions so far. Last weekend's 2-0 win over Brighton & Hove Albion at Anfield, only their fourth clean sheet of the season; a sign that a midfielder ball-stopper is needed.
At times, Gravenberch has been deployed in the number six role and at different times it's been Mac Allister, Szoboszlai, Nyoni, or Wataru Endo, but most of them are not natural holding midfielders. All of Gravenberch, Mac Allister, and Szoboszlai are attacking players, or at least had been for most of their careers prior to joining.
As such, Iraola essentially has more deep-lying playmaker midfielders than he does holding midfielders and ball-stoppers. Going forward, what he currently possesses works and has all the ingredients for the team to continue to create a plethora of chances, but they do still need a clearly defined type of "powerhouse," Rodri-esque type of midfielder to command the middle of the park.
Playing attacking midfielders there for extended periods will only work for so long and the top sides will know exactly how to exploit the spaces in midfield not occupied by a disciplined, tactically savvy holding player.
