GRAEME SOUNESS: Liverpool have a new lease of life and it’s great to see them on the march again… it sends some message if you can win the title without limitless funds

• The Reds rebuilt in the summer and could challenge Manchester City this year
• Jurgen Klopp will have felt the weight of responsibility but has come through it
• Mail Sport’s new WhatsApp Channel: Get the breaking news and exclusives here

It was my privilege to work for nine years at Liverpool, as both player and manager, and I came to know that the passion of the supporters there is different to all but a handful of football clubs in the UK.

For those fans, the club is everything. The team’s results have an impact on their contentment, their welfare, in some cases even their health. You see it in the faces of those who hang around the stadium on non-match days. Sometimes hundreds of people, just walking around the place. I’m sure Jurgen Klopp will have felt that weight of responsibility when results were not going the club’s way last season.

It will have been a very long summer for him, looking to get the right players in, hoping they will gel, sensing the local expectation that Liverpool would go toe-to-toe with Manchester City once again. And though these are early days – all September football discussion must carry that caveat – I have to say that I very much like what I see. A Liverpool team unbeaten, second in the table, enjoying a new lease of life.

It’s not been a total rebuild because in all the vital areas, the side was already established. Great goalkeeper. Great centre half. And the hardest thing of all to get: the guys who put the ball in the back of the net. But that squad has required radical surgery in midfield – an area which I said on August 12 last year, needed renewing.

I now see a midfield who are more skilled, extremely technically gifted, and yet still have the high work-rate of their predecessors. The best midfield in the eight years Klopp has been at the club consisted of Gigi Wijnaldum, Jordan Henderson and James Milner. That unit was extremely aggressive; constantly putting the opposite midfield under pressure to hurry and misplace their passes.

Liverpool are enjoying a new lease of life, currently unbeaten and second in the league table

They rebuilt over the summer, especially in midfield with the likes of Dominik Szoboszlai (left) and Alexis Mac Allister (right)

Jurgen Klopp will felt the weight of responsibility last season but is enjoying this term much more so far

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They would ‘keep their heads down’, as the pros call it – by which I mean, concentrating on the ball, rather than looking up and seeing the bigger picture.

None of that triumvirate I have named would be classed as technicians. But they had the fundamental thing which is often overlooked. A work ethic. They just gave 100% every time they crossed that white line. When lesser teams want to go from being a workaday side to one with a bit more flair, they generally sacrifice that work ethic for the additional bit of je ne sais quoi – and in the vast majority of cases they start to fail. When one or two fail to do the hard yards, your whole system falls down if you are not a terribly gifted team.

But I think the players Liverpool have got in bring a greater technical component as well as the work ethic. Dominik Szoboszlai, the 22-year-old Hungarian, looks silky. He wants to pass the ball forward all the time. I really like the look of him.

The same goes for Alex Mac Allister – the Argentinian with a Scottish name (who we needed at Hampden against England the other week!). It’s too early to start talking about Ryan Gravenberch, yet. It’s a different, more flamboyant midfield.

They’ve got so much adventure – what the Italians like to call ‘fantasia’ – with a midfield who are not happy about passing the ball back and sideways and want to pass it forward at every opportunity.

That would have certainly pleased the old Anfield Boot Room coaches. In my playing days, ‘pass it forward’ was all you ever heard from Ronnie Moran and Joe Fagan at Melwood. If anyone had the audacity to pass it square unnecessarily, we would hear about it. Ronnie or Joe would declare: ‘That’s cheap. I could have effing done that. At my age.’

Whether these players can do the hard yards and also provide the technical skills over the long, hard grind of a Premier League season, only time will tell. But I think Liverpool’s galaxy of strikers will enjoy playing with this more flamboyant midfield.

In Mo Salah, they have a player who is now in the pantheon of the club’s great strikers; who we can be talking about in the same breath as Ian Rush, Sir Roger Hunt, Billy Liddell, Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish. I still think they need another centre half, alongside Virgil van Dijk.

Mac Allister has done really well since joining the Reds and wants to pass the ball forward 

Mo Salah stayed at the club and can be talked about as one of the Reds’ all-time great forwards

Jurgen can’t be sure Joel Matip will be consistently fit and I’m not sure Joe Gomez or Ibrahima Konate are consistent enough to hold that place in a team looking to win the Premier League and ultimately the Champions League. They had 20-year-old Jarell Quansah making his debut at Wolves.

Jurgen won’t be happy that his team have conceded first in five of their eight games this season, though they have come back to win or draw, in a way that they often didn’t last season.

But if Liverpool can break City’s grip on the title this season, what a message it would send out to everyone else that there is another way to win trophies, which does not involve having limitless funds and a Gulf state sovereign wealth fund at your disposal. 

In Jurgen’s time at Liverpool, no club has recruited better players – which, I’ve stated here many times, is the only thing you must get right. They won a European Cup and a league while spending a fraction of the sum of Manchester City. Pep Guardiola joined a club that had won the title twice in five years, under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini. Jurgen joined one that hadn’t won it for 25 years. Pep’s net spend has been £550million. Jurgen’s has been £128m.

In some ways, I fear for my old club, long-term, in the face of Middle Eastern wealth at Manchester City, Newcastle United and potentially Manchester United. Their owners, Fenway Sports Group, are hard-nosed businesspeople who this week brought in other American investors to strengthen the club’s financial position.

That’s why it pleases me to see Liverpool with that remodelled midfield and a point to prove, heading to Tottenham today for the mouth-watering fixture of this weekend.

Liverpool’s owners don’t spent near as much money as Man City’s, but have still recruited well

Why would you want to be a striker in modern game?

My advice to an aspiring young professional footballer: ‘Don’t be a centre forward!’

Why not? Because so few teams in football seem to want to pass to them now. Only the very best teams in the Premier League pass the ball forward more than they pass it square. Ten yards left. Ten yards right. Going nowhere. This permeates through the game. 

A striker wants the ball quick and accurate. But we are seeing them make a run and the ball doesn’t come. They make another run – and it still doesn’t come. All too often, midfielders are content to go square and negative, from a position in their own half, when their first thought should be: ‘I’ve got to get this forward.’

Anthony Martial had four touches in Crystal Palace’s box on Tuesday. There have been two occasions when West Ham’s Michail Antonio has only had one touch, against Bournemouth and Luton. Some of this stuff is virtually unwatchable.

It’s difficult to be a centre-forward these days, with so few teams wanting to pass to them now

Michail Antonio has had only one touch in the opposition’s box on two occasions for West Ham already this season

Great to see Sexton’s skills

I enjoyed watching Ireland play South Africa in the Rugby World Cup. What a collision of giants. That sport’s certainly not for wee boys! I encountered Ireland’s Johnny Sexton, at the plunge pool at a hotel in Portugal we were both staying at, a few years ago, and was surprised he was about my shape and not towering over me. It liked him and it’s good to see what Johnny’s achieving for his country at the age of 38. 

Scotland need a win over Ireland next week to keep their World Cup hopes alive. They’re going to need to throw everything at it. 

Johnny Sexton is still the star for Ireland and it’s great to see his success at 38 years old

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