How Arne Slot unlocked £170m Liverpool cheat code | OneFootball

Liverpool have a player in their squad who defies logic in the way that he plays on the pitch.

He's primarily given a deep-lying midfield role - playing as a No. 6 - and ordinarily you would see that position restricted quite a lot. While a lot of the play goes through them, with passes and long-balls galore, the driving midfielders ahead of them usually take over from then on.

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Defensive midfielders are imperative to a team, breaking up the opposition's attacks and feeding counter-attacks, providing stability to an otherwise unstructured team. Following the sale of Fabinho to Saudi Arabia as a neared the end of his career, Liverpool were lacking in that department.

Moises Caicedo (went to Chelsea for £115m) and Martin Zubimendi (went to Arsenal for £60m) both snubbed the Reds in high-profile transfer sagas. Although a player was eventually ushered through the door who is now delivering the best of each player's games and more in his performances.

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While this isn't how valuations go, he's in essence a £170m player once all the fees are considered.

Liverpool's cheat code - Ryan Gravenberch

The Dutchman is a remarkable player who initially didn't start his Liverpool career very well because Jurgen Klopp physically didn't know what type of midfielder he was. Back at Bayern Munich, he had been used so little, that he's become one of this blind faith project players available on the market.

At £34m, the upside to his transfer was that he was only 21 years old and he had a track record to fall on at Ajax where he played 7965 minutes in 103 appearances. You felt as though his time in Germany was simply a case of wrong player at the wrong club. As such, the Reds took a punt on him.

To reiterate, his maiden campaign on Merseyside was bizarre - featuring for just 1856 minutes. Klopp couldn't profile him properly and while there were a few goal contributions to base your opinions on, he really looked quite lost. That was until Arne Slot arrived last year and turned him into a monster.

Such failures with Caicedo and Zubimendi fuelled the eventual decision with Gravenberch, turning him into a No. 6 type of player - instructing him to sit deep and glue everything together for us.

And suddenly, everything started to click into place. Alexis Mac Allister could be relieved of his duties and instead, a midfield double-pivot was created, with the Argentine now in his ideal position.

Dominik Szoboszlai was gifted the No. 10 role, something he excelled in to an extent - providing the forward press with his relentless work-rate, but struggling to quite get enough goal contributions.

And now in this current season, the evolution of Gravenberch is there for all to see. He's no longer just a defensive midfielder, and the team hasn't lost any structure from Slot's little adjustments.

Through five matches played, the Dutchman has two goals and two assists, with teasing through balls in the box creating chances, alongside two wonder-strikes that have caused mass headloss.

Suggesting he's the most complete midfielder in the Premier League is a statement one can only make with evidence, although the framework for such an evaluation has already been created for us - Zubimendi and Caicedo have four goals and assists between them this season and their individual efforts have far less of an impact on their teams than Gravenberch has when the Reds are playing.

He's undroppable in his current form, playing in the deep midfield role with the freedom to roam, and yet he'd hardly drop off if you placed him anywhere else on the pitch. He's a floor-raiser and a difference-maker in the side and Slot is the only manager to have unlocked him since he was at Ajax.