Although Liverpool ended up convincingly winning their Premier League game at White Hart Lane on Thursday night, the match wasn’t without its problems for Jurgen Klopp.
Once again a makeshift central defensive partnership had to be used just to put something vaguely resembling a defence together.
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With no return dates yet confirmed for Joe Gomez or Virgil van Dijk, a stop-gap centre-back was suggested by the BT Sports pundits watching the game.
“I’m not saying you are going to go and get your ‘A’ class, main centre-back right now, but there must be some sort of stopgap somewhere to fill that void,” former Manchester United defender, Rio Ferdinand, noted, cited by talkSPORT.
“Because you are saying now, ‘we will play with a central midfield partnership that are now going to be our centre-back partnership, or I’m going to play with two very inexperienced players.”
That provoked a quick, and some would say interesting, response from fellow pundit, Jermaine Jenas.
“Let’s just say that stopgap was Sokratis who came in, or Mustafi” he said.
“A centre-half out there who’s not getting a game. Are Liverpool fans going to be happy about it?”
“Is Jurgen Klopp looking at that and saying, ‘I’ve got an actual centre-half and this is better than Fabinho and Matip, or Henderson and Fabinho?
“Is it better, that stopgap, than what you’ve already got? It was a problem before January so you’d think they’d have someone lined up…”
Whilst the paying public may not necessarily agree with their sentiments, there’s an interesting point to be made.
Particularly if it ends up being the difference between Liverpool retaining their title or not, albeit the Reds will need some sort of renaissance between now and the end of the campaign if they’re to have any hope of domestic success.