Liverpool lose Isak and Gakpo before the Manchester City clash: the Lewis Koumas gamble

In the final training session before the big match, I stood outside the fence of the training ground and counted. I counted the red shirts appearing on the grass. Alexander Isak was not there. Cody Gakpo was not there either. Only a group of young players ran their warm-up, and in the middle of them, a 21-year-old named Lewis Koumas repeated off-the-ball runs as if telling himself that Anfield would belong to him tonight. I opened my notebook and scribbled two words: missing men. In forty-five years of this trade, I have learned that the most important line from a training session is never a goal, but the gaps a team leaves behind before the ball rolls. Tonight, that gap is at the front of the pitch. This Premier League season is only five rounds old, and the table has already drawn a fairly clear picture. Manchester City lead with a perfect record: five games, five wins. Liverpool sit sixth, with two wins and three draws, six points behind the leaders. Six points after five rounds proves nothing, but it is enough to turn the match at Anfield into an early landmark of the season. What matters is the timing. This fixture comes straight after an international break, and Liverpool returned with the two heaviest possible losses. Both Isak and Gakpo picked up injuries on national duty. Gakpo has an ankle problem. Isak has a minor thigh issue. Injuries like these are usually short, but they have arrived at the worst possible moment, as the team prepares for a run of fixtures that the coaching staff themselves describe as season-defining. I have sat through enough press conferences to recognise one thing: when a manager talks about uncertainty, he is usually talking about several things at once. Uncertainty about the squad. Uncertainty about form. And this season there is another layer of uncertainty, a bigger one, beyond the control of anyone on the pitch. But let us set that aside for now. First, let us talk about what happens inside the box. For a team chasing the top, losing two attacking options at once is a blow to the plan. Isak is not a name you replace for the sake of it. He scored four goals in his first five Premier League games this season. Four goals in five games is the output of a striker at the peak of his powers, and more importantly, of a player the whole team has learned to play with. Isak's movement does not only create goals for himself; it stretches opposition defences and opens space for midfielders to break into. Remove a striker like that from the line-up, and an entire attacking system has to relearn how to breathe. Gakpo, with his ankle pain, is a different problem. An ankle injury at the pain-management stage does not always rule a player out entirely. It could turn Gakpo into a substitute option, someone who could come on in the second half if the game demands it. But a team cannot build a plan for a heavyweight fixture on the hope that a half-fit player will shine from the bench. The plan must be written for fit men. And the only fit man left for the centre-forward role, at this moment, is a 21-year-old. Lewis Koumas is not yet a name that Anfield chants every weekend. He is an academy product, a player still learning his trade, and he may now be pushed into one of the most intense matches of the season. What stands out is how the coaching staff speak about him. Rather than lowering expectations, they have publicly placed their trust in him. That is a two-sided signal. It could mean the club genuinely believes in a young generation, ready to hand opportunities to new faces at a decisive moment. It could also simply mean there is no other option left. Based on my experience of watching matches across many seasons, I have noticed that big clubs tend to react in one of two ways when they lose their spearhead. The first is to swap like for like, trying to find a clone of the man they lost. The second is to change the structure, not looking for someone like Isak but for a way of playing that does not need Isak. The second is harder, demanding training time that a big match does not allow. But it is also the only way for a team not to depend on any single individual. At Anfield tonight, I expect we will see a bit of both. Koumas may start as the centre-forward, but his role may not be to score; it may be to drag defenders and create space. Behind him, the midfielders may have to push higher, accepting risk to compensate for the shortfall. An attack without a true centre-forward can sometimes be harder to read, because it offers no fixed reference point for defenders to cling to. But it is also more fragile, because when a goal is needed in the second half, the team will look around and find no one cold-blooded enough to carry the burden. And here is the tactical crux: this season's Manchester City are not a team easily subdued. Five games, five wins. A defence that has conceded only a handful of goals in five matches is a well-organised defence, one that knows where to stand and how to squeeze space. Against an opponent like that, losing two forwards is not just losing goals. It is losing the ability to break a defensive block programmed not to be broken. In other words, Liverpool walk into this match with the hardest question of all: how to score against the best defensive side in the league while their best scoring tools sit outside. I do not say this to be pessimistic. I say it to point out that any analysis of this match that stops at the sentence Liverpool are missing players has not touched the essence. The essence lies here: a team chasing the top, facing an unbeaten opponent, forced to redefine how it attacks. The Liverpool coaching staff have made clear that the run of fixtures from now to November will say a great deal about this team. It is a cautious phrase, but the implication behind it is anything but cautious: they know this is the period that will shape the identity of the season. In a run like that, losing two forwards at once is no longer about one match. It is about a whole month, when a packed calendar allows no one to rest. Set side by side, the two squads say a lot about the resource gap. Manchester City come into this match with a deep squad built over years of heavy investment. Liverpool, with two strikers out, are forced to lean on their academy. The contrast is not new, but it is always worth noting, because it shows that in modern football, squad depth is an asset that cannot be bought in a single transfer window. That is the football. But as I said, this season carries another layer of story. I keep the rhythm for a team by writing down even the things nobody wants to read. And the thing nobody wants to read here is this: Manchester City come into this match as a club just found by an independent commission to have breached more than 100 Premier League financial rules. The club deny any wrongdoing and have lodged an appeal. That appeal process could drag on for months, and throughout it, a shadow will hang over the league. What matters here is not the verdict, because the source does not specify any concrete sanction. What matters is the state of things. A club just found in breach, now appealing, must walk into an away match, in front of a stand reportedly ready to greet them with the hottest possible atmosphere. In football, situations like this tend to produce one of two reactions. Either the team is distracted, and that distraction shows in every off-rhythm pass. Or the team turns it into fuel, playing with an us-against-the-world mindset, and becomes more dangerous. I have witnessed both reactions across more than four decades of watching football. And I am always wary of predicting which team will react which way. What I know for certain is this: when factors off the pitch grow larger than factors on it, the match becomes harder to read than any tactical calculation. That is why I want to talk about the biggest misunderstanding surrounding this match. Outside opinion is telling two stories. The first: Liverpool are in crisis, their attack in ruins, and a defeat would leave them nine points behind after six rounds, effectively settling the season early. The second: Manchester City are living in a legal storm, and the verdict will decide this match. Both stories are half right, and half wrong. A Liverpool defeat would leave them nine points adrift. But a 38-round season is not decided in round six. Nine points is a gap, not a sentence. Any club that has witnessed a long comeback understands that. Liverpool's problem tonight is not the number on the table after the final whistle. The problem is this: the club is building a new way of playing, and a defeat to a direct rival could shake belief in that way of playing. And the Manchester City story. The legal verdict is a big matter, but it does not score for anyone. It does not make runs for anyone. It does not defend for anyone. If it has any effect, it affects psychology, and psychology in football is the hardest thing to measure. A team with five straight wins can walk into Anfield with the confidence of someone with nothing to lose, or with the burden of someone under scrutiny. No one knows in advance. But there is a detail rarely mentioned, and I think it matters more than anything. Liverpool supporters are reportedly planning to greet the team bus with flares and fireworks. On paper, that is an act of support. In reality, it is a risk. In England, flares and pyrotechnics are banned inside and around stadiums. A roadside display can turn into a sanction for the very club the fans want to support. A fine, or worse, a partial stadium closure. A team can win on the pitch and still lose in the disciplinary room. This is the kind of paradox I have been writing about for years. When a stadium echoes with the sound of absence, I understand that football is a conversation between people. And those conversations do not always happen the way we want them to. Fans want to say that they are here, that they support the team. But sometimes the message is drowned out by the noise, and all anyone hears is the noise. There is one more thing I want to stress, because it is often skipped in fast news. Liverpool sit sixth, but they are unbeaten. Two wins, three draws. The team has not lost, but has dropped points in matches they should have won. A team like that often faces a subtler problem than losing: the problem of conversion. You create chances, you control the game, but you do not kill it off. And when you lose your two best finishers, that problem risks becoming more serious. Look at Isak: four goals in five games. Look at the team's record: only two wins. There is a gap between what one individual achieves and what the collective gains. That gap is not large, but it exists, and it is the mark of a team trying to fit its pieces together. A match like the one against Manchester City is the test of whether those pieces fit. So what will shape this match? I think it is neither the legal verdict nor the hypothetical nine-point gap. What shapes it is Liverpool's ability to create goals without their familiar goalscorers. If Koumas and the midfielders find a way through Manchester City's defence, the club will gain more than three points. They will gain a new belief, a new way of playing, proof that they depend on no single man. If they fail, the question of squad depth will return, louder and more uncomfortable. I have written about Liverpool across many managerial reigns and many generations of players. And the lesson repeats itself: big matches are not decided by who is present, but by who dares to stand up when others are absent. Tonight, the name being called is a 21-year-old. He could become the story of the season. Or he could become a small note in my notebook, a line I will reread at the end of the season and wonder what happened. The transfer market taught me one thing: people buy hope and sell nostalgia. And football, at its deepest level, runs on exactly that currency. Liverpool are selling the memory of strikers who have gone, and buying the hope of a young man nobody knows yet. The match against Manchester City will tell us whether that purchase was worth it. For me, the signal to watch is not the scoreline. It is how Liverpool react in the first fifteen minutes of the second half. If they stay patient, keep their structure, and still believe in their way of playing even without a goal, that is the mark of a team growing up. If they panic, launch long balls, and break their own structure, that is the mark of a team not yet ready for the long race. And on the other side, the signal to watch is how Manchester City walk out of the tunnel. A team with a perfect record, under appeal, stepping into a hostile stand. Will they play like men with nothing to lose, or like men trying to prove something? The answer will appear in the first twenty minutes, before anyone scores. Football is never only football. But tonight, at Anfield, it will start from there. From a 21-year-old, a depleted attack, and a stand preparing to say something that perhaps even they do not fully understand.