Liverpool Can’t Replace Trent Alexander-Arnold

It emerged this week that Liverpool’s star right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold will likely be joining Real Madrid when his contract expires at the end of this season.

This means Liverpool will be looking for a new player in his position ahead of the 2025/26 season, but for a couple of reasons, it won’t necessarily be looking for a direct Alexander-Arnold replacement.

Alexander-Arnold cannot be replaced by one new player coming into the position he currently occupies at Anfield, and there are two main reasons for this.

World-Class Homegrown Talent Is Rare

Many of the biggest clubs in the game will occasionally produce their own world-beaters who come into the team and become among the best in the world in their position, but this is relatively rare, and is why teams use the global transfer market as they do.

Alexander-Arnold has been a huge part of Liverpool’s success in recent years under previous manager Jürgen Klopp and has played a key role in the transition to a new manager, Arne Slot, and the club’s current charge towards a 20th league title.

Within a team of world-class, high-quality signings from around the world, Alexander-Arnold has been the link to the city of Liverpool itself at a time when the best teams in the world can often struggle to maintain such local links.

He is not the only one, as fellow Liverpudlian Curtis Jones has also become a key member of the squad and an England international, too, but as of now Alexander-Arnold is the highest profile example.

“The Scouser in our team” goes his chant, regularly ringing out around all four corners of Anfield for the most gifted and uniquely talented Liverpool player to come through their ranks since Steven Gerrard. There are 18 years between the debuts of Gerrard and Alexander-Arnold, which is an indication of the frequency of such local players emerging from a youth academy in this manner.

The best way to build a team is a combination of academy talent and savvy signings from the global transfer market, and this is something Liverpool does better than most.

The emergence of another stand-out right-back out of the academy, Conor Bradley, who is at a Premier League level even if not world class (at least not yet) eases the pressure on finding an Alexander-Arnold replacement, but as we will see, Liverpool will need something more if it is to replace what the departing Scouser brings to the team.

Trent Alexander-Arnold Is Unique

There are no right-backs in the game like Alexander-Arnold. None, arguably ever, have his combination of style of play and level of ability.

The idea that constantly knawed away at anyone who watched or coached him that made them think he might actually be a midfielder is the same idea that makes him such a unique right-back.

His is the output of a midfielder, but one playing at right back. When tried in a permanent midfield role, whether for Liverpool or England, Alexander-Arnold has never looked wholly comfortable starting his play from a central position and finishing it there. There is always a part of him that tends towards right-back.

Even if that right-back looks like a modern interpretation of the position, who sometimes drifts into midfield or underlaps inside rather than overlapping their winger, a right-back it still is.

In many aspects, his output has been even better than many of the best midfielders, thanks to his range of forward passing, pinpoint delivery from any distance, and technique.

On the other side of the game, Alexander-Arnold’s defending has never been as bad as it’s often made out to be.

He has suffered from the same accusations aimed at pretty much all the best attacking full-backs in the history of the game that are based on an impossible expectation of being in two places at once—being both a potent attacking weapon and somehow teleporting back to defend in an instant.

Despite this unfair judgment, Alexander-Arnold’s defending isn’t a strong point, and he can sometimes look as awkward and unnatural on the defensive side of the game as he does majestic and enterprising on the attacking side. It’s a decent trade-off when the attacking attributes are so good, but, again, the defensive side isn’t any worse than most other right-backs.

Playing Moneyball

This situation is a classic example of the quote from the film Moneyball when the Oakland Athletics were looking to replace Jason Giambi.

To paraphrase that line, Liverpool can’t replace Alexander-Arnold, but what it might be able to do is recreate him in the aggregate.

It applies to Alexander-Arnold especially, because even if money was no object, Liverpool would still struggle to replace a right-back whose output was that of a midfielder–short of signing a world-class midfielder and playing them at right-back. Even then, from a positional point of view, it might not be as extreme as re-training a catcher to play first base but it would require some considerable adjustment for the player.

Liverpool will need to replace the creativity, the delivery, and progressive passing Alexander-Arnold brought to the team in other areas as well as signing a quality, albeit perhaps more traditional, right-back.

Given the club will need signings in a number of areas this summer, it has the ideal opportunity to do so while also strengthening other areas.

As a club with a recent history of using data to its advantage, leading to mostly good recruitment under an owner, Fenway Sports Group, with a baseball background, it will be interesting to see what Liverpool does ahead of the 2025/26 season in a situation which is a big test of those methods.

With two more of its best players out of contract at the end of the season with situations as yet unresolved, it’s possibly the biggest test yet.