Sunday’s events did little to solve our striker problem.
We began the day scouting Alexandre Lacazette, who chose to blank in an Arsenal home match for the first time – frustrating the 265,000 who had acquired his services with the Brighton fixture in mind.
The Frenchman was also withdrawn early, with 20 minutes remaining, as Arsene Wenger handed Olivier Giroud some oxygen. That will always be an issue.
Clearly, Lacazette doesn’t fit into the same untouchable bracket as Alexis Sanchez; Wenger feels comfortable hooking and even omitting the striker from his starting line-up when he sees fit.
Combine that with the lack of away goals to this point, and it’s clear that the Gunners option has much ground to make up before we can consider him in the same bracket as Harry Kane or Romelu Lukaku.
Even as a third striker, we’d have to keep Alvaro Morata and Gabriel Jesus ahead in the pecking order for now.
So where does Roberto Firmino sit in those ranks?
His omission from Jurgen Klopp’s teamsheet was perhaps no big surprise; we were braced for it.
However, it arrives as another telling blow to the Brazilian’s stock at a time when we desperately needed him to show form and cement his status as a third striker.
Now we will surely continue to see his ownership and value plummet over the break, with the confidence of his 1.2 million owners broken by a run of blanks and Klopp’s selection.
Daniel Sturridge hardly passed his audition to claim the central role, and Firmino will surely be re-instated for the visit of Manchester United in Gameweek 8, regardless of his long-haul flight home.
But Liverpool’s attack are clearly faltering. They relied on the genius of Philippe Coutinho for today’s breakthrough, but it’s not the chance creation that’s broken – it’s purely their finishing.
The numbers show that Klopp’s attack have averaged 20 goal attempts over their last two Gameweeks, with three big chances per match. But only 20% of their efforts have hit the target, compared with 41% from Gameweeks 1-5.
Sturridge wasn’t the solution, and Firmino will return, but is the damage already done?
There will be some who end up holding Firmino just because of the lack of alternatives: we have Jamie Vardy and a cast of mis-firing, inconsistent candidates at 8.5 or below.
Just like Lukaku, we may look for a change but arrive at Gabriel Jesus as the only route.
The Brazilian is clearly an extremely credible candidate, with the fixtures to fly. But he’s also a player who – by his own recent admission – was playing the role of a “winger” or not playing at all when Sergio Aguero was fit.
We can settle on Jesus for now, but few of us will believe that it’s for keeps.
6 years, 8 months ago1 ft left :
A) Salah -> Sane/Sterling or
B) Lukaku -> Jesus/Morata