Five reasons why Liverpool can win the Premier League title
Jurgen Klopp has created a strong squad that can seriously challenge on all fronts in the upcoming season.
Liverpool only managed to finish fourth last season, but they did make it to the Champions League final where they were beaten 3-1 by Real Madrid. The top four finish means they will be in the premier European competition once again.
Klopp has invested heavily in the squad with smart additions that are sure to improve the team. Therefore, they will be aiming to make up ground on Manchester City who ran away with the title last season.
Here are five reasons why they have a serious chance of going all the way as well as maintaining a strong presence in all competitions…
1. Alisson Becker
The goalkeeping position was the one major weakness in the team that had to be fixed this summer. Loris Karius appeared to have established himself as a reliable number 1 after a tough start to his time with the Reds.
He was a reliable performer in the second half of the Premier League season. However, that changed after a catastrophic performance in one match. Unfortunately for him and the club, this happened to be the Champions League final.
Karius gave Karim Benzema the easiest goal of his career after a silly mistake and then proceeded to fumble a Gareth Bale shot later on. A stunning striker from the Welshman was sandwiched between them, which no goalkeeper would have stopped.
The two errors ended up being the margin of difference between the two sides. A display like that will be tough for him to ever recover from, and that’s highly unlikely to happen at Liverpool because there will always be doubts about him.
Alisson is the perfect solution for this issue and the £66.9 million that was spent on him acts as a statement of their confidence in his ability. He averaged 3.41 saves per goal with a total of 27 goals conceded and 15 clean sheets in 34 Serie A games last season.
The Brazilian is also comfortable playing out from the back as shown by his average distribution length of 29 metres and 83% distribution accuracy.
These numbers all compare favourably with the German goalkeeper and a save percentage of 77% is higher than the 66% for the individual he is replacing. One of the key areas that foreign goalkeepers can struggle with in the Premier League is the high amount of crosses and long balls. However, he appears to be comfortable in this area because he only made 12 punches in contrast to 87 catches.
He appears to be a good all-round goalkeeper and doesn’t have a clear weakness, so Liverpool now have someone who can they rely on as their last line of defence. Therefore, they have an extra bit of rigidity about them which works well with an attack that can blow teams away.