How Trent Alexander-Arnold re-established himself as Liverpool's creator-in-chief
It wasn’t that long ago that people were questioning Trent Alexander-Arnold’s role in this Liverpool team. The Reds, who sit top of the Premier League table following their 2-1 win over Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon, overhauled their midfield in the summer, bringing in Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister, Wataru Endo and Ryan Gravenberch, and Jurgen Klopp has had to bed these players in while dealing with injuries and suspensions.
Players have had to adapt their roles to accommodate others, and for the good of the team. Alexander-Arnold fell into this category. Despite many feeling as though Liverpool switched to the inverted full-back tactic to facilitate their No.66, the numbers told a different story.
For example, compared to his Premier League average, Alexander-Arnold played fewer passes but had a better pass success rate. Most advanced metric models had his Expected Assists average down on previous campaigns. He was carrying the ball more too.
The England international, however, wasn’t impacting the final phase as he had previously. Instead of being the creator, he was the one tasked with getting the ball to the creators. That is why, prior to the game against Manchester City, he was ranked third in the Liverpool team for chances created behind Szoboszlai and Mohamed Salah. Chances created is a metric he’s dominated for the Reds since the 2018/19 season.
Over recent weeks though, Alexander-Arnold has been tasked with once again making things happen. And he’s thriving.
He’s been the highest-rated Liverpool player in each of his last four Premier League matches. Alexander-Arnold has four goal involvements in his last five outings across all competitions as well as two WhoScored player of the match awards.
The Liverpool-born full-back has stepped things up for his hometown team just when they have needed it most. He scored a late equaliser against Manchester City away at the Etihad. He then scored a late winner against Fulham to help the Reds claim a 4-3 win over Marco Silva’s side. Alexander-Arnold assisted the all-important opener against Sheffield United in a game Jurgen Klopp’s men were struggling in. The 23-cap international came off of the bench against LASK to assist the final goal in a 4-0 win.
The right-back is back pulling the strings for the Reds. He played two key passes against Fulham, seven against Sheffield United and six against Crystal Palace. Yep, 15 key passes over a three game period in the same of a week. For a little more context here, next on the list is Salah with seven, Luis Diaz with six and Kostas Tsimikas with five.
Alexander-Arnold has gone nuclear over the past week.
He earned a WhoScored rating of 7.62 in Liverpool’s 2-1 win over Crystal Palace at the weekend weekend. This is impressive when you consider he didn’t score or assist and he changed positions at half time.
In what is becoming the norm for the Reds now, Klopp moved Alexander-Arnold into midfield. The German tactician did the same thing against Fulham. After the switch at the break, only Virgil van Dijk (56) and Joe Gomez (44) attempted more passes than Alexander-Arnold (42). No Liverpool player made more tackles (2) or interceptions (2) than the 25-year-old. Only Gomez (4) and Kostas Tsimikas (3) managed more dribbles than Trent (2). He also made more clearances than anyone from the visiting team and finished with the joint most blocks.
Alexander-Arnold put in a shift after the break and gave Liverpool a platform to get themselves back into the game. It wasn’t a great performance by the Reds but they did enough to stay within touching distance of the Eagles to then capitalise on their opportunities.
Klopp summed it up perfectly in his post-match interview with TNT Sports:
"76 minutes, really bad game from us. We came here and I think you could see in the beginning Crystal Palace were insecure, really low confidence levels, and I think we could have done so many things and didn’t. I told the boys that’s the first game I’ve seen somebody play as bad as we did for 76 minutes and still winning.
"In this period of the year, I said it after Sheffield United, we have to get through this, we need results. Nobody is in for the Oscar award, best football game ever, it’s about three points we got them and we are more than happy."
Liverpool have had to dig in deep over the past fortnight and Alexander-Arnold has really come to the fore. He’s vindicating the decision to give him the vice-captaincy. It’ll be interesting to see if these performances convince Klopp to use him as a full-time midfielder now.
