Adam Wharton has what Liverpool are missing

Liverpool’s midfield engine that powered last season’s title romp has sputtered in 2025-26, and the numbers on the table tell the story: the Reds are drifting off the pace while rivals sprint clear. Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister, so authoritative twelve months ago, have regressed sharply, leaving a once-omnipotent unit looking ordinary. Dominik Szoboszlai is enjoying the finest form of his career and Florian Wirtz has made the No. 10 shirt his personal playground, yet the collective remains blunt. The diagnosis is simple: Jürgen Klopp’s side lack a deep-lying conductor capable of dictating tempo and punching vertical passes through the lines.

Gravenberch’s drop-off crystallises the problem. Tasked again with the hybrid No. 6/8 role, the Dutchman has been tidy in possession but bereft of the line-breaking deliveries that unpick compact blocks. Liverpool’s build-up has become predictable, and without that quarterback at the base, Wirtz and the forward line receive the ball too late and too far from goal.

Enter Adam Wharton. The 22-year-old Crystal Palace prodigy is emerging as the closest approximation to a Thiago Alcantara successor on the English scene. Operating at the base of Patrick Vieira’s midfield, Wharton has revelled in the responsibility of launching attacks, and his latest masterclass—a pair of assists in Palace’s 3-1 dismissal of Tottenham—merely added gloss to a season-long exhibition of progressive distribution. Even on a Palace side languishing in mid-table anonymity, Wharton’s passing heat-map is a riot of forward arrows: third-man passes into the half-spaces, clipped diagonals to switch play, and, most importantly, the courage to hit the risky ball that breaks a high press.

Scouts from Europe’s elite have taken notice. Real Madrid and Barcelona are expected to join the queue when the summer 2026 window opens, but Liverpool may hold the most urgent need. Slotting Wharton alongside Gravenberch would restore balance: the Englishman supplying the vertical thrust from deep, the Dutchman shuttling box-to-box, and Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike receiving service in stride. It is a formula that could keep Anfield dreaming for the next decade.

Wharton is not the finished article—his defensive positioning will sharpen with experience—but the raw materials are elite. For a club that prizes tempo and transition, the Palace youngster offers the rare blend of poise and incision Liverpool currently crave. If the Reds are to bridge the gap to a fresh generation of contenders, the solution may reside not in a reboot of last season’s blueprint, but in the acquisition of the one ingredient they never truly replaced.