Arsenal: Liverpool recruitment the unquestioned aim

Under Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool have dramatically and purposefully improved through excellent player recruitment. Arsenal must now aim to replicate that success.

In my favourite moment of the football season, Jordan Henderson walked over to his nearby father knowing he had done it. He had reached the pinnacle. His dad, Brian, had dealt with throat cancer in recent years. He was Henderson’s biggest supporter in the tough times, even not wanting to tell the Liverpool midfielder of his cancer diagnosis because he was worried how it would affect his son’s performance.

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And right at the top of the mountain, with the click of the camera deafening and the rise of the spectacle insatiable, the two ignored all around them in a strong embrace. Arm around the shoulder, Henderson crying into his Dad’s chest, this was what the pair had worked for for all of his life.

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Henderson is the epitome of the Liverpool story. A talented but flawed midfielder playing for a lesser team. Signed in hope as much as expectation, limited in certain areas but excellent in others, the Wearside prospect developed at the club, becoming an all-encompassing midfielder right in the heart of Jurgen Klopp’s system. He is the captain for a reason.

His story perfectly illustrates the quality of the Liverpool recruitment in recent years. He may not have been a Klopp signing, but he embodies many of the Kloppian elements. Young, gifted, exceptionally hard-working, humble and self-aware, and perfectly suited to a very specific role in a team.

Henderson is not the best tackler. He is not the quickest or strongest. He is a good passer, but not a great one. He will not dribble past opponents at ease. But he is a terrific runner, a superb athlete, capable of bounding up and down the pitch, and Klopp has built the system such that his strength, his stamina, is used at its greatest impact.

The starting XI in Saturday’s Champions League final were signed from the following clubs: Roma, Academy, Schalke, Southampton, Hull City, Monaco, Sunderland, Newcastle United, Roma, Hoffenheim, Southampton. Only three cost more than £40 million, all of which were signed in the last 18 months, and all have improved no end under the brilliant coaching of Klopp.

As Unai Emery and Arsenal attempt a Liverpool-esque rebuild, they too must look to target very specific but flawed players in the transfer market, improve them in house, and build a cohesive unit out of their relative strengths, not their inherent, sometimes seemingly debilitating weaknesses.

Turning Lucas Torreira, Bernd Leno and Matteo Guendouzi into elite players at their positions, for instance, would be reminiscent of what Klopp has achieved on Merseyside. Targetting young, talented but cheaper players this summer, players that can then grow at the club, is how they must build the squad, especially given their thoroughly restricting budget.

What the Liverpool recruitment achieved under Klopp is to make the best of very specific and cohesively assembled talent. And that has rippled throughout the team. Arsenal must now replicate that same process in north London. If they can, maybe one of their players will embrace their father at the top of the mountain just as Henderson did.