Bradley Barcola will love playing with brilliant star, a perfect match

Bradley Barcola will love playing with one star at Liverpool. It's a perfect match to truly unlock the Frenchman.

Bradley Barcola has arrived at Liverpool - though, we're still waiting for his 'announcement' on the pitch. The winger has played three times for the Reds now, including two starts, but with zero goals or assists.

There should have been a goal, of course. Florian Wirtz put Barcola through one-on-one against Atlético Madrid only for him to fire wide. It's the kind of moment that we hope to see a lot more of, albeit with a better finish.

That game was a particularly interesting one, though. Barcola started on the right, despite being a predominantly left-sided player. It's an interesting call from Andoni Iraola as convention would tell you that you play the record-breaking signing in his preferred role.

But in this Liverpool team, perhaps that's not the best use of Barcola. Perhaps he should be a right-sided player - if only because of the right-back.

Bradley Barcola x Ronald Araujo

Barcola is an attacking player and a fantastic one at that. You don't want to limit him defensively and, in fact, you don't want to limit him at all.

That's part of the problem with Barcola on the left. Milos Kerkez is an attacking full-back and one who only really wants to overlap. That takes away some of Barcola's game as while he prefers to cut inside, he doesn't necessarily want to do it every time.

But that's what Kerkez asks of his winger. He's not a player who's particularly good on the underlap, nor is he useful when sitting back. Barcola, then, finds himself with limited space.

However, the right flank may offer something else. Ronaldo Araujo is setting himself up as the first-choice right-back and there's little question that he's an out-and-out defender.

The Uruguayan is actually a centre-back, after all, but he's found himself as a regular on the right already. He's never really looking to overlap, let alone underlap - the winger in front of him has free reign of the flank.

Now, some wingers don't like that. They'd prefer to have an overlapping full-back in order to let them cut inside - Mohamed Salah being a fantastic example of that as someone who essentially never wanted to go on the outside if he could help it.

Barcola, though, excels with that flexibility. We saw it against Atlético: he could hold his position outside or drift inside, while never once worrying about the right flank being covered defensively.

That freedom feels like the best use of Barcola right now. Instead of an overlapping/underlapping partnership between winger and full-back, it can be a full-on defensive/attacking trade-off, with one handling defending and the other attacking.

That feels like the best use of both players right now - a strategy that uses both players to their strengths and frees them to focus entirely on what they're good at.