Liverpool's Midfield Concerns: Jamie Carragher Sounds Alarm

Jamie Carragher has sounded the alarm over Liverpool’s midfield, warning that Andoni Iraola’s new-look side is nowhere near ready to mount a serious Premier League title challenge.

With the 2026/27 season just over a week away, Liverpool are trying to reset after a chaotic year that ended with Arne Slot’s dismissal and a scramble to finish fifth. Champions League football was salvaged, but only just. The memory of a title win the year before already feels distant.

Now Iraola steps into the job and into a squad that has barely been touched.

A new era, same old problem

Liverpool have had a quiet summer. Victor Munoz and Ronald Araujo are the only fresh faces through the door so far, while Jeremy Jacquet is finally arriving after a deal with Rennes was wrapped up back in February. The club are still chasing a winger to replace Mohamed Salah, with Bradley Barcola a leading target.

Carragher, though, is looking elsewhere. For him, the real storm is brewing in the middle of the pitch.

“The midfield issue for me is still a huge problem for Liverpool,” he said on the latest episode of The Overlap Fan Debate, brought to you by Sky Bet.

He hasn’t watched every pre-season outing, but he did sit through the last two – against Leeds and Monaco – and what he saw only confirmed his fears.

Last season, Liverpool’s midfield often looked like open country. Opponents ran through it, found pockets of space, and exposed a structure that never quite convinced. Carragher’s verdict is blunt: that weakness is still there.

“The problem Liverpool had last season was there was space everywhere in Liverpool’s midfield. That has not gone away at all.”

Too much running, not enough balance

Iraola appears ready to lean heavily on Dominik Szoboszlai in a deeper role. Rather than operating as a classic No.10, the Hungary international has been used as a central midfielder alongside Ryan Gravenberch, with both encouraged to surge from box to box.

For Carragher, that setup is a red flag.

“It looks like they’re going to play him, rather than as a number 10, almost as a central midfield player alongside [Ryan] Gravenberch and that is just pure box-to-box.

“I look at that midfield three and I worry about Liverpool.”

The talent isn’t in question. Carragher namechecks Gravenberch, Florian Wirtz and Szoboszlai as “really good players”, top-level technicians with the ability to change games. The issue is how they fit together, not what they can do individually.

“But as a midfield three, I look at that and think, oh no – there’s almost too much quality, but they all want to go and play and run. And even in pre-season, the space is coming through the middle.”

The warning is clear: this is a midfield built to entertain, not necessarily to control.

Title talk on hold

Liverpool’s hierarchy may yet move in the market, with the wide areas the current priority after Salah’s departure. But as things stand, Carragher doesn’t believe this squad, with this midfield balance, can go stride for stride with the Premier League’s elite over 38 games.

And unless Iraola finds a way to close those gaps in the centre of the pitch, Liverpool’s new era might begin with the same old question hanging over it: who is going to hold this midfield together when the real games start?