Jamie Carragher is right to praise Curtis Jones – but here's what he got totally wrong

You know you played pretty well when practically every pundit in the country is queuing up to praise you the instant that the full-time whistle blows. This morning, Liverpool midfielder Curtis Jones was able to wake up and take his shower in all the plaudits coming his way. He earned them.

Jones has spent most of the season down Arne Slot’s pecking order, and this was only his second league start, but he was superb against Chelsea, finding space and using it superbly, scoring what proved to be the winning goal and coming out on top in the vast majority of the scraps he found himself in over the course of a fierce midfield duel. He scarcely put a foot wrong, and the only question marks after the 2-1 win were why he was substituted off and why he hasn’t been starting more often in the first place.

Monday’s back pages have been filled with high praise and pundits on Sky and the BBC were equally effusive. Rafa Benítez described him as “fantastic” and broke down his positional play in interesting fashion. Danny Murphy wrote a column dedicated to Jones. And Sky Sports’ resident Scouser Jamie Carragher was falling over himself to fire his own superlatives into the atmosphere around Anfield.

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Jones was “brilliant” and “outstanding”, according to Carragher, which is an entirely accurate description – but it was also interesting to note that the former Liverpool and England defender saw Jones’ performance not just as a high watermark for himself but also as evidence that one of the club’s failures in the summer transfer market wasn’t such a big deal.

"I wonder if Arne Slot is going to go back in for [Martin] Zubimendi in January,” Carragher added. “But when you see how he played today you think 'no'.”

Which is a point worth exploring. Does Jones’ excellence mean that missing out on high-quality defensive midfielder in the summer wasn’t a problem after all? Or are those two very different matters?

Zubimendi ended up rejecting a move to Anfield in August despite the club opting to pay his €60m (£50.2m) release clause, largely because of a desire to stay in San Sebastian, but there have been reports in the Spanish media which suggests that he regrets the decision after Real Sociedad’s poor start to the new season. In other words, the notion that Slot may go back in for the Euro 2024 champion isn’t necessarily specious – and even if Zubimendi stayed put, Liverpool may well continue to look for a player with a similar profile.

The problem with suggesting that Jones is good enough to fill that positional need is that he didn’t play the same kind of role that Zubimendi might at all. Although Slot has typically played with a double pivot so far this season – usually consisting of Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister – he did things differently against Chelsea, and Jones wasn’t playing as a holding midfielder at all. Instead, he spent most of the game wide of Gravenberch, looking for space down the left wing and creating passing options. There was only one ‘number six’ involved, and that was the young Dutchman.

In other words, it isn’t Jones’ performance that tells us whether Slot might still need a ‘genuine’ defensive midfielder – it’s Gravenberch’s. And despite the eventual result, the former Bayern Munich midfielder was less impressive than his midfield colleague.

Left to patrol the centre of the park alone for long stretches, Gravenberch battled but often came up short. He won less than half of his one-on-one duels and registered just one tackle all game. While perfectly tidy in possession, he was not able to provide the kind of effective protection to the back four that Slot would have wanted.

When the manager took Jones off for Mac Allister, it wasn’t a condemnation of Jones’ performance but a reflection of the need to put a double pivot back in to protect the lead, and perhaps an acknowledgement that Gravenberch doesn’t have the capacity to do that job alone, or at least wasn’t able to on the day. It’s no coincidence that as soon as Slot did that, Chelsea found chances harder to come by.

The very fact that Slot felt the need to take Jones, the best player on the pitch, off in order to do that tells us that the Dutchman doesn’t feel as though Jones has the steel to pull that role off himself – something also plainly implied by the fact that Jones hasn’t been starting matches and only got his chance when allowed to do so by a tactical tweak which didn’t last long.

If Slot wants to continue playing with that double pivot, then suddenly the need for Zubimendi – or at least another player who fits that playing profile – suddenly looks rather more acute than Carragher perhaps appreciated. And if Slot only believes that Gravenberch and Mac Allister can fulfil the defensive responsibilities inherent to that position (Wataru Endo seems not to be to the new coach’s tastes) then it may be hard to maintain a title run across a long season with only two players for two positions on the pitch.

Jones was brilliant on Sunday and deserves every gushing column inch and every sizzling hot take that’s coming his way. But that doesn’t mean that Liverpool have all their ducks in a row, and they may still need to make moves in January to challenge Manchester City’s dominance effectively.