42-year-old manager could fully unlock Trent Alexander-Arnold next season if Liverpool hire him – opinion

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Jurgen Klopp will go down as an absolute legend at Liverpool.

The German has been an incredible manager for the Reds, and he will leave this summer with so many success stories behind him.

Klopp has transformed the career of many a player at Anfield, but perhaps his greatest success story over the past nine years has been Trent Alexander-Arnold.

The German found Alexander-Arnold as a teenage defender who was shining in the academy and transformed him into one of the Premier League’s great playmakers.

Klopp managed to get so much out of Alexander-Arnold, and whoever comes in next will have to figure out how to best use this special talent.

Alexander-Arnold will be a key weapon for whoever comes in next, and there is one manager who would surely love to get his hands on the full-back.

Indeed, Xabi Alonso has been strongly linked with the Liverpool job over the past 24 hours, and the 42-year-old could work absolute wonders with Alexander-Arnold.

Alonso isn’t afraid to use attacking wing-backs in his back five system, and, whisper it quietly, both of his wide defenders at Bayer Leverkusen are outperforming Alexander-Arnold this season.

Alex Grimaldo has seven goals and eight assists in the league, while Jeremie Frimpong has five goals and six assists.

Meanwhile, Alexander-Arnold, perhaps surprisingly, has just two goals and three assists. Simply put, Frimpong and Grimaldo are outperforming Alexander-Arnold in an attacking sense.

Now, that isn’t to say that those two players are better than Alexander-Arnold, but in Alonso’s system, they’re given that bit more freedom to attack and create, and it’s working an absolute charm.

Klopp managed to turn Alexander-Arnold into an incredible attacking force at Liverpool, but in an Alonso system, the full-back could perhaps go to the next level and put up numbers that we didn’t think were previously possible.

This is something that is very exciting to ponder, that’s for sure.