Arne Slot has a WILD plan to replace Trent Alexander-Arnold with £60m star | OneFootball

Arne Slot has a plan to replace Trent Alexander-Arnold and it includes the club's £60m star.

Things are going to be different at Liverpool next season. It's not being spoken about much but the reality is that the Reds are going to miss Alexander-Arnold's ability to progress the ball from deep and create chances from the right-flank.

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Now, this doesn't mean they are going to be worse off without him. Far from it, Liverpool already look like a much better side with a plethora of new arrivals.

However, it does appear that Slot is working on a plan to replace Alexander-Arnold's good qualities on the ball with an interesting option at right-back.

Despite having Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong, Slot may have another player in mind to use in that position in some games next season and he just trialled this in a pre-season friendly.

Early Sunday afternoon, Liverpool played a behind closed doors friendly against Stoke City. The Reds ran away 5-0 winners, with Darwin Nunez scoring a hat-trick.

Rio Ngumoha and Federico Chiesa scored the other two goals for Liverpool with Florian Wirtz making his debut.

But what was the most interesting part of the game was probably who was used as the right-back in the starting line-up. Instead of Frimpong and Bradley, Slot went with Dominik Szoboszlai.

The starting line-up therefore looked like this: Mamardashvili, Szoboszlai, Van Dijk, Gomez, Robertson, Jones, Nyoni, Wirtz, Salah, Nunez, Ngumoha.

Arguably, this was the line-up which included the most starters in a game where Luis Diaz, Alexis Mac Allister and Alisson were all absent from.

And surprisingly, Szoboszlai got the nod to start as the right-back.

The Hungarian didn't disappoint, he was involved in the first two goals from the game. His attempted through ball was only half-cleared for Liverpool's opening goal which allowed Nunez to follow up and score.

And Szoboszlai registered the assist for Nunez's second goal with a low-cross.

This isn't an entirely new role for the Hungarian. He's played as a right-back for RB Leipzig in the past. The Reds' £60m acquisition from the German side (BBC) once played there against Teutonia in the DFB Pokal.

During that game, Szoboszlai played one of his best matches for Leipzig. He registered two assists the match, created seven chances and broke a DFB Pokal record as per Opta.

According to Opta, he was the first DFB Pokal player to achieve the following statistics in a single match:

So impressive was his performance that his teammate Benjamin Henrichs commented 'Dani Alves' under his Instagram post from the match.

That brilliant performance is a taster of what he could do if he were to play in that position. Szoboszlai's best ability is his quality when it comes to making progressive balls from deep - this is something we haven't seen of him too much at Liverpool but it's an area of his game he excelled in at Salzburg and Leipzig and continues to do for the Hungarian national team.

It's probably not something we will see often. However, in some games where Slot knows his team are going to control possession, Szoboszlai could be useful in the role, inverting into the middle or staying on the flanks to play that Alexander-Arnold role, which only the Hungarian is capable of playing in this Liverpool team at the moment.