How Carlo Ancelotti May Have Shaped Liverpool's Transfer Dealings This Summer

Liverpool have been decisive in their early business this transfer window, bringing in Darwin Nunez for a club-record fee, and two starlets in Fabio Carvalho and Calvin Ramsay.

The Reds narrowly missed out on completing an unprecedented quadruple last season, after Manchester City eeked a 3-2 win on the final day of the Premier League season.

Jurgen Klopp’s men also lost out to Real Madrid in the Champions League final in Paris.

Los Blancos showed their patience and guile to beat a tired Reds side, with Carlo Ancelotti describing Liverpool as ‘easy to decipher’ tactically.

According to The Liverpool Echo, this may have caused Jurgen Klopp to dabble in some new tactics and formations for the coming season.

As the Reds usually like to change it up slightly in the opening games, many believe that they will switch to a 4-2-3-1 system.

With the arrivals of Carvalho and Nunez, this would make complete sense.

Nunez could drop deep to flick balls on to the Portugal Under-21 international, who had a prolific partnership with Aleksandar Mitrovic last season for Fulham.

It could also free up Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz, with Diogo Jota able to play in all four positions across that frontline. Roberto Firmino, recently described by The Athletic as still having the best first touch at the club, is expected to have a more prominent role in this system than he had last season.

The Reds did have a spell using the formation semi-regularly back in late 2018, in which a pivot of Jordan Henderson and Fabinho freed a front four of Sadio Mane, Mo Salah, Roberto Firmino and Xherdan Shaqiri to run riot against sides like Arsenal, Newcastle and Manchester United.

Klopp, in his time at Dortmund, used the formation to great effect.

The German would usually play a flat-back four, but his full-backs had a bit more freedom, something which Klopp still employs today.

However, the midfield shaped up a lot differently from what we're used to. Instead of playing a sole defensive midfielder, Klopp would usually play Sebastian Kehl and Nuri Sahin in a midfield two.

He could utilise Thiago and Fabinho here, with Jordan Henderson, James Milner and maybe Curtis Jones as replacements.

There’s still a pre-season to experiment with such tweaks, but it’s fair to say a shake-up wouldn’t be the worst idea, even with such a successful campaign in their wake.