Liverpool won five of the six matches played in all competitions in September, and nobody who saw them play in those matches will have been surprised by the name of the player chosen by the fans as the Player of the Month at the club – Ryan Gravenberch. But many would’ve been shocked and outraged had told them this would happen back when the Dutch midfielder arrived at the club, just over a year ago.
Born and raised in Amsterdam, Gravenberch is a product of the famous academy at Ajax. In 2022, he left his home city to join Bayern Munich, but his time with the then-champions of the Bundesliga wasn’t exactly great. He was keen to leave and try his luck elsewhere and accepted, gladly by all accounts, the opportunity to join another club with six Champions League trophies in their history.
And yet, things didn’t change as quickly as he would’ve liked, following his arrival on Merseyside. In 2023/24, he made just 12 Premier League starts, with Jurgen Klopp preferring Alexis Mac Allister or Wataru Endo in the “6” role, leaving Gravenberch to compete for the two more advanced roles in the 4-3-3 system against Dominik Szoboszlai, Harvey Elliott and Curtis Jones.
But after Liverpool failed to sign Martin Zubimendi from Real Sociedad during this year’s summer window, new coach Arne Slot opted for a tactical change which appears to have propelled Gravenberch to great heights.
The 22-year-old now mostly plays alongside Mac Allister in a midfield pairing of a 4-2-3-1 formation. His understanding with the Argentinian seems on a very high level. Most importantly, each of them is always ready to cover for the other in the middle of the park, and that has allowed Gravenberch’s qualities – most notably his ability to read the game, as well as to carry the ball forward past opponents, to thrive. And when he chooses not to waste energy on running too far with the ball, he simply produces a top-class line-breaking pass.
The Player of the Month award, while only at club level, is a proof of the progress Gravenberch has made over the last 12 months. Having a coach that appreciates and gets the best out of a player’s talents – Slot certainly does – is one thing, but beating the likes of Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andy Robertson, as well as Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota, to the award, in a month when all of them play well, is quite another.
Another game… ANOTHER Ryan Gravenberch comp 💫
— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) October 2, 2024
Liverpool beat West Ham in the third round of the Carabao Cup on September 25th, and that was the only match since the start of the season which Gravenberch didn’t play as Slot chose to rest him.
On the other hand, he not only played and started every match in the other two competitions – six the Premier League and two in the Champions League – but he played the whole 90 minutes in every single one of them.
In mid-August, Zubimendi rejected Liverpool. At the end of September, Gravenberch has more Man of the Match awards than Zubimendi’s Real Sociedad have wins in all competitions since the start of the season. When Slot said in a recent press conference that the Premier League leaders had moved on from the Spain international, indicating that no fresh attempt to obtain his services will be made, he obviously wasn’t bluffing.
With Gravenberch playing the way he does, Liverpool don’t need Zubimendi. They do need, however, someone to take some load off the shoulders of the young Netherlands international every now and then, and as the season progresses and matches come thicker and more difficult, Endo and Jones will have to show that their own qualities still warrant a place at the club.
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