Hugo Ekitike is the latest addition in Liverpool's summer rebuild, so is Arne Slot shifting back towards Jurgen Klopp tactics?
Arne Slot's summer reshuffle was already the most significant by a reigning Premier League champion in the competition's history.
Florian Wirtz's arrival points to a reconstruction of the Liverpool midfield. Deals for Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez mark the end of the celebrated full-back pairing of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson. But the expected arrival of Hugo Ekitike is the final flourish that makes it practically a full-scale revolution.
This is not Jurgen Klopp's team any more.
And yet, as the Bundesliga stars file in, it curiously looks as though Slot is taking Liverpool on a journey back towards his predecessor's ideas.
Before we consider how and why Ekitike will have an impact on Slot's tactics, it's worth looking at the headline numbers to show why Liverpool are prepared to spend £69m, with £10m in add-ons, on the 23-year-old.
Ekitike scored 15 goals and provided eight assists in 31 Bundesliga games last season, totalling the fifth-most goal involvements in the division. He was also involved in the fifth-most 'attacking sequences' in the Bundesliga.
That can be interpreted as showing the quality of Ekitike's all-round game, whether holding up the ball, running into channels, or bursting in behind.
In that respect – in most respects, in fact – he is very similar to Alexander Isak, albeit with considerably more flair to his game and a penchant for taking players on in the dribble.
He is particularly adept at setting up team-mates, too, creating more chances form open play (44) in 2024-25 than any other Bundesliga forward.
The only slight concern is that Ekitike is a little raw in front of goal. He took 117 shots in the Bundesliga last season, more than anyone else, but converted a disappointing 12.8%, leading to an xG under-performance of 6.6 goals – a bigger gap than any other player in Europe's 'Big Five' leagues.
But that just means Ekitike needs a little tuning up.
It's worth nothing that when Isak was the same age, playing for Real Sociedad in 2021-22, he scored just six goals in 32 league games, under-performed his xG by 3.8, and converted just 8.2% of his shots.
In an era when utilising attacking transitions are of increasing importance, Ekitike's smart assists, his give-and-go moves, and his line-breaking carries into the final third are all hallmarks of the elite modern number nine.
As a case in point, he topped the 2024-25 Bundesliga charts for shot-ending carries (44) and ranked fifth for attempted dribbles (126), while also scoring more goals from fast breaks (4) than anyone else in the division.
That's why Ekitike's expected arrival represents such an interesting shift for Slot.
In his debut year, Slot tamed the wilder aspects of Klopp's football to create a slower, calmer Liverpool, living up to widely held expectations of a manager who once described Pep Guardiola teams as the "ultimate joy in football".
But Ekitike represents a shift back the other way, perhaps reflecting a similar realisation to the one that recently struck Guardiola.
"Modern football is not positional," Guardiola told TNT Sports a few month ago, not long after signing a direct and transition-centric forward in Omar Marmoush, Ekitike's striker partner at the time. "You have to ride the rhythm."
Slot, too, appears to be making concessions to the way modern Premier League football is changing.
It's telling that Ekitike will arrive in the same summer as another Bundesliga star, Germany international Wirtz, forming a new-look attack built on piercing forward movement and an inclination to weave through the thirds as quickly as possible.
The two should combine superbly. Both are sharp one-touch passers between the lines, both love to crash the box, and both were sculpted in fast-transitioning Bundesliga teams.
That is a clear step change for Slot and, to an extent, a surprising turn back towards the 'heavy metal' days of Klopp.
Is Slot making major revisions to Liverpool's formation?
Along with Wirtz and the two new full-backs, Ekitike points to a different Liverpool set-up.
In 2024-25, some 47 of Liverpool's 86 goals (55%) were scored or assisted by Mohamed Salah, who ran the right wing almost on his own as Alexander-Arnold drifted inside.
By contrast, Frimpong is a very attacking, very wide right-back. That should take some of the pressure off Salah, but it might also see the Egyptian move infield to support the new creator-in-chief Wirtz, Liverpool's first proper number 10 in years.
Adding weight to that theory is Ekitike's history of playing in a strike partnership. He was arguably at his best in a 3-5-2 alongside Marmoush at Frankfurt, with whom he regularly swapped positions in a fluid forward line.
He was also more often than not playing in a two at Reims, where he made his name. Could Slot be planning something similar with Ekitike and Salah?
In a 4-2-3-1, Frimpong's aggressive wing play on the right could free Salah to drift inside and operate as something like a split striker alongside Ekitike, with Wirtz and a number eight sitting just behind.
That would certainly be direct, dynamic and straight-lined, and would certainly be ready for a turn towards fast-transitioning football next season.
But it's just one of the options available to Slot now he has such a versatile number nine leading the charge.
Ekitike can drop like Roberto Firmino or get in behind, can play alone or in a two, and can play transitional football or in a possession-centric side.
He is the real deal: the centre-forward of the calibre and tactical dexterity pretty much every 'Big Six' club has been looking for.
Whether Slot continues with Guardiola-like patience or swings back towards Klopp-like verticality, Liverpool's chances of retaining the Premier League title just improved.
Category: General Sports
