Is Marko Grujic Liverpool's new Momo Sissoko?

The leggy Serb was much sought after before he signed for Liverpool from Red Star Belgrade in January, staying with his hometown club for the rest of last season. Grujic’s start at Liverpool has been slower than some expected, and he has returned to the Under-23s for experience, and to the gym to bulk up. With several players ahead or alongside him in the pecking order for a defensive midfield berth – Can, Lucas Leiva and Kevin Stewart, for example – further patience may be required.

But he will surely get more opportunities this season. His style of play has brought – perhaps optimistic – comparisons with the likes of Yaya Toure, but Grujic can take more realistic inspiration from Sissoko’s short but impressive stint at Anfield from 2005-08. The Malian offered energy and grit at the heart of Liverpool’s midfield for nearly three years, despite some nasty injuries, including a boot in the eye. With the Liverpool defence continuing to leak goals, Grujic could yet find himself turned to as a reliable pair of feet. 

Is Georginio Wijnaldum Liverpool's new Xabi Alonso?

There’s nothing like a comparison with a great to put a spanner in the works of someone’s career, but Wijnaldum, who arrived this summer after a season with long-suffering Newcastle, deserves comparison with the Spanish star because he is proving so effective on the field. Sometimes, the best midfielders are almost anonymous. They’re not box to box, they don’t send tackles flying in, they don’t power up to the edge of the area for a speculative hit at every opportunity; they don’t need to. 

Alonso, like so many Spaniards of his generation, treasures the ball and knows what he wants to do with it before anyone has a chance to object. It’s early days for him at Anfield, but Wijnaldum has similar characteristics. Liverpool fans barely notice him when he plays, and really miss him when he doesn’t, as in the drab draw against Man Utd. He’s tidy, effective and keeps things ticking over towards the attacking options ahead of him.

Alonso’s greatest games were played alongside Javier Mascherano, whose strength and bite gave Alonso the chance to play. Wijnaldum doesn’t have that luxury, as truly defensive midfielders seem anathema to Klopp. The Dutchman may yet form a similar partnership with Emre Can, or Jordan Henderson; maybe both. And if he catches a sight of goal from the halfway line at any point, he could make the comparison to Alonso even more solid.

Is Sadio Mane Liverpool's new Luis Garcia?

The millions Liverpool have spent on promising young attackers from overseas who failed to make the grade is a horror story. El-Hadji Diouf and Bruno Cheyrou under Gerard Houllier, who compared the latter to Zinedine Zidane; Ryan Babel and Alberto Riera under Rafael Benitez (at least Riera had a few decent games); Oussama Assaidi and Iago Aspas under Brendan Rodgers. Some have gone on to success elsewhere, and the fault is partly the club’s, where demands are so high and the spotlight so fierce; players are given little time – by managers, the media and increasingly the fans – to learn the league and adapt to it.

Mane is a little different. The 24-year-old Senegalese has two years of experience with Southampton, for whom he scored 21 league goals, and he has already demonstrated a toughness in a Liverpool shirt that eluded many of his predecessors. There have even been suggestions that Mane could fill the chasm left by Luis Suarez’s departure. Well, let’s deal with that one quickly: he can’t. Suarez was a dream for Liverpool, an explosion of energy, fearlessness and goals (82) that the club could not always control and ultimately could not contain. Liverpool developed an unhealthy reliance on the Uruguayan, but so far this season the many goals have mainly been shared between Roberto Firmino, Philippe Coutinho, Adam Lallana, Divock Origi and Mane. Mane therefore doesn’t need to replicate Suarez’s goalscoring feats, even if he could.

Instead, his speed, tricky and eye for goal are reminiscent of another Luis: Luis Garcia. I won’t call it a ghost goal, as it went down in the records as a real one, but his strike against Chelsea in the 2005 Champions League semi-final, alongside others en route to Istanbul, ensured his place in the club’s history books. Mane’s goal against Arsenal on the opening day of this season suggests the Senegalese may have a similar knack for rising to the bigger occasions and he's certainly this year's signing that fans should be most excited about.

Is Joel Matip Liverpool's new Daniel Agger?

The Premier League has had its share of classy ball-playing defenders down the years: Rio Ferdinand, Jonathan Woodgate and Ledley King, to name just a few. We could add John Stones of course, if we include playing the ball to opposition strikers. Liverpool fans would add the name of a certain Dane to that list. Tough, tireless and heavily tattooed, Agger played more than 230 games for the Reds despite recurrent injuries – he recently opened up about overuse of anti-inflammatories during his career – and formed a fairly reliable good cop, bad cop partnership with his partner in tattoos, Skrtel, even if it never quite fulfilled its promise.

Agger gave Liverpool the best years of his career; fans will be hoping Matip can do the same, and be rewarded with more than the Dane’s solitary League Cup medal. The Cameroonian arrived on a free transfer, having been a stalwart for Schalke. Many expected Matip to link up with Mamadou Sakho at the back, but his spectacular fall from grace means Dejan Lovren has stepped up. It remains to be seen whether Matip’s partnership with Lovren can emulate Skrtel-Agger on its best days, but the early signs are that these two are Klopp’s preferred pairing. 

Is Ragnar Klavan Liverpool's new Sotirios Kyrgiakos?

The summer departures of centre-backs Kolo Toure, Martin Skrtel and Andre Wisdom (on loan at Red Bull Salzburg), plus full-backs Jose Enrique, Brad Smith and Jon Flanagan (the Scouse Cafu is struggling for game time on loan at Burnley) left a hole in the Liverpool squad for a versatile, experienced defender. Klavan could fill that hole. The signing of the man with a name like a Viking screamed “League Cup player”, but he impressed in pre-season and in the early games, suggesting he could be more than that. 

The Estonia captain, who turned 31 on 30 October, can deputise at left-back and notched up more than 100 appearances in nearly four years at Augsburg in the Bundesliga. But is he better than those he replaced? Skrtel is playing in the Europa League with Fenerbahce, and Toure was playing in the Champions League with Celtic. Liverpool fans might wonder whether keeping one of those players, with their extensive Premier League experience, might have been a better option.

Yet Klopp’s knowledge of the German league led him to turn to Klavan ­– wages were a factor, too – and he may turn out to be a reliable third choice in the mode of Kyrgiakos. The big Greek with a giant pony-tail made the role of enthusiastic defensive back-up all his own after signing in 2009. He soon got to grips with Merseyside traditions too, including a red card in the derby in 2010. Klavan could achieve instant cult hero status by doing the same. 

Is Alex Manninger Liverpool's new Brad Jones?

Let’s be honest, things would have to be pretty dire for Manninger to get a run in the Liverpool team this season. The Austrian, who won the league with Arsenal in 1998 (deputising for David Seaman, he was given a medal despite not playing enough games to automatically qualify), was signed as third-choice keeper to allow the younger keepers, Danny Ward and Ryan Fulton, to depart on loan, to Huddersfield Town and Chesterfield respectively. But there is a precedent for unheralded keepers making a home at Anfield.

Brad Jones was picked up in 2010 by then Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson to contribute to the home-grown player contingent – bizarre for an Australian, but he graduated from Middlesbrough’s academy. The £2.3m Liverpool paid Boro for him was the only transfer fee of his career (so far; he’s now at Feyenoord and perhaps still waiting for that big-money move … at 34), which can’t have pleased his agent. But he was popular at Liverpool because he just seemed to love being there so much, and he performed, when called upon, exactly as you’d expect a third-choice keeper to.

Further back, Paul Jones came to Liverpool’s rescue in an emergency loan deal in 2004. He played twice, becoming the club’s oldest post-WW2 debutant. If 39-year-old Manninger gets on the pitch, he’ll break that record. Let’s hope that, if required, Manninger can be relied upon to keep up with the Joneses.

Is Loris Karius Liverpool's new Pepe Reina?

Karius was plucked from Mainz 05 this summer having just turned 23, and quickly took the No. 1 shirt. He made more than 90 appearances for the upper mid-table Bundesliga side, but the early signs are mixed: he is better with his distribution than his Belgian rival, Simon Mignolet, even if combining the essential characteristics of a world-class goalkeeper – being an excellent shot-stopper and commanding his area – have not been evident so far. But he is too error-prone to be a commanding presence just yet.

Reina arrived at Anfield at a similar stage in his career – aged 22, having made more than 100 appearances for Villarreal – and Liverpool fans will be hoping that the German eventually makes an equal impression. Reina, despite his acrimonious departure, is still a Kop hero to many, having played nearly 400 times for Liverpool, most memorably when saving three penalties against West Ham in the shoot-out that decided the 2006 FA Cup final. He holds the Liverpool record for the most clean sheets (55) in his first 100 starts and he’s still going strong, now in his second spell at Napoli, which leaves some fans wondering if he couldn’t do a job on Merseyside.

Karius’s unlucky early injury – a broken hand sustained in pre-season – raises the spectre of another Liverpool goalkeeper, however: Chris Kirkland, who signed for the club aged 20, the reported £6m fee making him the most expensive English goalkeeper at the time. Injuries, and Jerzy Dudek ahead of him, meant his Anfield career never reached the hoped-for heights.  

Pudsk blogspot is no more

Hello and thanks to everyone who followed my musings on the pudsk blogspot. I have tried every login I can think of, but alas my password is lost in the sands of timelessness, and so I've created a new area for thoughts on stuff and football. Mainly football.