Arne Slot was forced to tweak his midfield against Frankfurt and the performance of Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones in their 5-1 win showed it should stay that way.

Slot’s decision to start all four of Hugo Ekitike, Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo while not selecting a natural right winger caused eyebrows to raise pre-match.

Liverpool set up in a 4-2-4 of sorts from kickoff, with Wirtz the nominal right-sider, and the head coach’s comments before the game emphasised the need for stability in his two-man midfield.

“They can play together, they showed this against United,” he said of dual-nines Ekitike and Isak. “But it does mean that our midfield needs to be structured a little bit differently.

“So where we usually play with maybe one No. 6 now we need Curtis and Dom to be a bit more defensive-minded than one of the two usually is.”

Such was the strength Liverpool found with that restructured midfield that Slot may have in fact found his new blueprint.

Jones and Szoboszlai brought stability

Per FotMob, Jones (139) and Szoboszlai (121) had by far the most touches of any player in Wednesday’s 5-1 victory at Deutsche Bank Park.

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