Liverpool announce Like A New Signing who is upstaging £400m+ deal as Slot’s ‘hardest worker’

Liverpool spent more than £400m and have ended up with a Like A New Signing upstaging them all, while Carabao chances were taken at Brighton and Chelsea.

The League Cup third round resumed on Tuesday evening in an unexpectedly newsworthy series of games.

This lot royally screwed up their chance. These Premier League players took the initiative and impressed.

Diego Gomez

Congratulations to Chelsea on their newest recruit. And to Brighton, who have unlocked the rare and undeniably delicious Carabao flavour of Double Bagel with 6-0 wins over both Oxford and Barnsley.

Gomez scored five of those 12 goals to suggest the Seagulls are very much at it again.

Sir Alex Ferguson was not alone in arguing that there is no value in the January transfer window. “I could never see any real diamonds,” he once said. “Now and again you get one.”

Brighton seem to unearth one every year. Facundo Buonanotte, Yasin Ayari, Deniz Undav, Moises Caicedo, Evan Ferguson and Alexis Mac Allister have all been signed in the winter over the last seven years and gone on to either make a significant first-team impact, be sold for a substantial profit or both.

Barnsley witnessed first-hand why there should be confidence that Gomez can be next.

Facundo Buonanotte

It remains to be seen where the long-term future of Buonanotte lies. A curious career path has taken in a temporary stay at Chelsea following a relegation-adjacent Leicester loan, with no option or obligation to extend his time at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea hardly need such fine print in place to pursue the permanent signing of a Brighton player, with this an unexpected opportunity for Buonanotte to prove his worth as a viable Cole Palmer alternative.

The England international’s recovery timeframe has been placed at three to six weeks for the groin injury which forced his substitution at Manchester United. While the natural instinct would ordinarily be for Chelsea to work towards the former and rush their attacking fulcrum back, the emergence of someone who can shoulder Palmer’s creative workload can persuade them to be more patient.

That is no bad thing. Palmer has needed more help for months; Buonanotte has the ability to provide that if he is given the proper platform.

Jorge Cuenca and Issa Diop

Marco Silva accepted that making 11 changes to the starting line-up made it difficult for players to establish any sort of rhythm or cohesion. But there was praise reserved for two players in particular beyond goalscorer Emile Smith Rowe.

Cuenca and Diop were “very serious in the way they work to keep pushing Calvin Bassey and Joachim Andersen”. They won 12 headers between them. John Beck will have begrudgingly admired it.

Sam Johnstone

Wolves are presumably already scrambling not only to finalise the permanent signing of ostensible loanee Ladislav Krejci for £26.2m, but also to identify precisely where they’re going to sell him in the next couple of years without a suitable replacement to properly shaft whichever poor sap is in the Molineux dugout at the time.

The versatile Czech international could be the leader Wolves need to drag themselves out of trouble.

But there is an interesting situation brewing for Vitor Pereira between the posts. Wolves have reached that stage of the season when they drop Jose Sa just to feel something, and Johnstone’s performances have made that a perfectly justifiable call.

He made four saves to keep Wolves’ first clean sheet in 11 games. It is a relatively low bar but one Sa has failed to clear in too long.

James Garner

Few at Everton will be particularly minded to glean many positives from such an insipid defeat. But Garner cracked the bar with a free-kick, made more tackles than any other player, was only out-shot by one – obviously Michael Keane – and barely misplaced a pass.

As Ally McCoist said recently, presumably followed by a “…Fletch, he really is,” Garner is “a manager’s dream”.

Federico Chiesa

He was, in the words of Arne Slot, “the one that was most involved in the game, tried the most, worked the hardest”.

Chiesa’s difficult omission from the Champions League squad has elevated the Carabao Cup to his most likely source of regular minutes. And he did more than anyone to ensure there would be at least 90 more with his performance against Southampton.

“Of course he wasn’t happy with that decision,” Slot admitted after leaving Chiesa out of his European selection, “but he understood the argument. He gave the answer you want to hear from a player, and he will be there to help in the other cups and in the league.”

Quite. He is averaging a goal or assist every 86 minutes or so across his 19 Liverpool appearances, making chicken salad out of rather more limiting and less appetising ingredients.

It has been far from straightforward for Chiesa at Anfield but as Slot said and Hugo Ekitike ever so slightly overlooked, Tuesday evening was “all about” the Italian.

Liverpool spent more than any club ever has in a single transfer window this summer, yet their Like A New Signing is setting the example.

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