Search icon

Football

26th Apr 2018

Damien Duff’s claim about Liverpool couldn’t be more accurate

Spot on

Robert Redmond

“Energy can only get you so far.”

Damien Duff has claimed that Liverpool are three new players away from mounting a genuine challenge for the Premier League title next season, and he’s right. Jurgen Klopp’s team take a 5-2 lead into the second-leg of their Champions League semi-final against Roma next week. Despite being 19 points behind Premier League champions Manchester City in third-place, they appear best equipped to push Pep Guardiola’s side next year.

Klopp’s team were the first to beat City in the league this season and got the better of them in both legs of their Champions League quarter-final, winning the first-leg at Anfield 3-0 and the return tie 2-1.

Liverpool look to be the most likely to challenge City if they can add to their squad and keep hold of their stars, such as Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino. According to former Ireland and Chelsea winger Duff, if they can sign a goalkeeper to replace Loris Karius, find an upgrade on Dejan Loven in central defence and add some creativity to central midfield, Liverpool will be primed to disrupt City’s domestic dominance.

“They swat teams aside in 30 minutes, they did it in 40 minutes last night,” Duff said about Liverpool on RTE’s coverage of the other Champions League semi-final between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

“If they get those two positions sorted (central defence and goalkeeper) and get a creative midfielder – energy can only get you so far – get a proper ‘baller, they’ll challenge for the Premier League.”

Duff has a point about Liverpool, especially about adding a much-needed creative midfielder.

You can watch him speak about Liverpool here:

The FootballJOE quiz: Were you paying attention? – episode 10