The Tea Leaves on Frimpong to Liverpool

Hello, favourite humans. Welcome back to another week. Today, I am going to read the tea leaves on the Jeremie Frimpong transfer to Liverpool, and then catch up on the rumour mill. Frimpong is NOT a fullback in a traditional back four, so why would the league winners make this move?

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As reported last week and discussed a bit on the midweek podcast, all of German media believes Jeremie Frimpong is about to move from Bayer Leverkusen to Liverpool. There’s no bidding war here - the champions are simply going to exercise the €40m release clause that is active for the 24-year-old right wingback who was instrumental in helping Leverkusen win a title two seasons ago.

And the reason why the are making this move is to replace Trent Alexander-Arnold as a fullback, right?

Not so fast, my friends…

Trent and Frimpong’s outputs look nothing like each other, and that’s because Frimpong does almost nothing that looks like fullback output on the football pitch. He doesn’t accumulate even moderate volumes of tackles and assists. He rarely protects and recycles the ball. For a fullback, he is a turnover nightmare. And unlike Trent, he’s barely involved in creating deep progressions — moments where he passes to his teammates in dangerous positions.

But this is the guy expected to replace the greatest right back Liverpool has ever seen?

Unlike certain other Premier League teams, Liverpool’s brain trust aren’t stupid, so what exactly is going on here?

Hypothesis 1: Arne Slot intends to play a back 3 fairly regularly during the coming years.

I feel like the Premier League is less tactically homogenous than it has been in a few years. We have various styles succeeding at different levels in the table, with the Portuguese middle block messing with team progressions, Pep Guardiola’s family tree doing well but also regularly adapting, Pep himself trying to figure out his new tactical way forward, and Oliver Glasner showing consistent success with a back 3 on the way to leading Crystal Palace to their first every trophy.

As such, and given Liverpool do have elite centrebacks, the boffins may have talked to Arne Slot about his interest in being more tactically flexible going forward. Slot has been an outstanding practical head coach, and while this type of flexibility is rare in most coaches, I think Slot is one of the few that could pull it off regularly, provided he had the talent at his disposal.

There’s already some evidence that Ryan Gravenberch drops to play as a partial back 3 regularly, but that seems fairly fragile given how high Frimpong actually plays compared to Trent, so I think the tactical adjustments would need to be more extensive to accommodate the signing.

Hypothesis 2: Frimpong is the long-term replacement/backup to Mohamed Salah.

Check this out:

This is a comparison of Salah last season and Frimpong during Leverkusen’s title season as a wing back. That looks a lot more sensible than trying to compare Frimpong to Trent directly, right?

The other thing that both Salah and Frimpong have in spades? Meep. So much meep. And meep is what makes the Premier League go these days and what provides the easy goals from kicking the ball into space and letting your weapons attack the opposing defense at speed.

Now it’s possible that Slot is going to test Frimpong at RB and see how well his team fares tactically, and make adjustments based off that. But I think it’s more possible that LFC see Frimpong as a probably long-term successor to Salah that they can buy for only €40M. Which would be great business, and exactly what we expect from LFC these days.

I admit, I’m intrigued by both cases. I think it would be both fun and scary to see Salah as part of an occasional front 2 in a 3-5-2 with Frimpong taking up the wide right space as wingback and creating a havoc partnership for anyone trying to mark the pair. It would also allow Liverpool to gum up the centre of the pitch as they have done so well during their best seasons across the Premier League and Europe.

But I also think it’s super interesting to think of this as a lopsided back 4, with Frimpong pushed extremely forward on the right most of the time, Milos Kerkez and his endless engine on the left mostly playing a defensive role, and then Bradley available for whenever LFC want to play more normal with either Salah or Frimpong as RWF.

Kerkez is young and doesn’t have great stats output as a left back, but the one thing he already has is amazing physical output and the ability to run for days and days. Assuming you wanted to sign a “right back” who is actually an extra attacking midfielder, inking the kid that runs himself into the ground every week on the other side is probably the correct plan. Even at £45m?

The weird part of all of this for me is how much LFC’s passing profiles are likely to change with these signings and Trent leaving. We know who is going to run for them, but as a result, I’m curious who the quarterbacks will end up being outside of Virgil van Dijk, and how that will impact their play in and around the final third. Maybe an improvement on set pieces will solve that nicely as well?

News and Rumours

• In addition to Frimpong and Kerkez, Liverpool are allegedly courting Florian Wirtz, which would be one of the more impressive transfer windows in recent memory if they manage to pull all of that off.

• Barcelona are hot in the rumours lately after unexpectedly winning the La Liga title last week. Said rumours are filled with things they want to do, but sparse on details with how they will actually do anything at all given how few levers seem left at their disposal/how many historic levers have been patched away by La Liga FFP.

• Fab says Xavi Simons and his weirdo deal are ready to leave Leipzig, which isn’t really a surprise, since almost all weirdo deals have unwritten parts to them that explain why they are so weird to outsiders, and usually involve “this player is definitely moving at THIS time and sundry people are getting p-a-i-d.”

• Newcastle have entered the race to sign Jamie Gittens from Borussia Dortmund. I like Gittens and think that makes sense for both the Magpies and Arsenal as a potential target, but as always, it comes back around to price.
  
  And uh… making the Champions League.
  
  Which will be decided amongst Newcastle, Chelsea, Man City, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest in a fun-filled final round on Sunday at 16:00 in jolly old Engerland.

• The Daily Mail suggest the price for Adam Wharton is £60M which is literally only believable via release clause. [Or the fact that the Mail, like the Sun, is a trash paper who doesn’t know what they are talking about.]

• In Chelsea news, they are once again looking for centrebacks who can overcome their GK’s inability to distribute the ball effectively. Two of the names they have landed on recently are Marc Guehi (unsurprising) and Jarrad Branthwaite (a bit more head scratching, but I guess last summer’s United move is off and he’s listed on Everton’s ledger as a ‘saleable asset’).
  
  Guehi’s dream move is supposedly somewhere more sunny. Branthwaite’s dream move is presumably somewhere with more money.

• Despite our lack of confidence in him — and he has plenty of stans in our comments on various social media platforms — Man City are all over the rumours in pursuit of AC Milan’s spellcheck nightmare Tijjani Reijnders. The Italian club have allegedly turned down a £50.4m offer for the Dutch international midfielder, as City look to add him and Florian Wirtz to the Big Pep Rebuild started in January.

• Real Madrid and Brazil forward Vinicius Jr, 24, is a target for a number of Saudi Arabian clubs with an offer of £210m (250m euros) believed to be on the table - en espanol.
  
  So uh… we would take that offer. Just, you know, in case it’s real and anyone wanted our opinion. But it’s probably not real, and just Vini’s agent negotiating his new pay package via stoking the media with flaming sticks.

—TK

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