Trent Alexander-Arnold has done Liverpool a FAVOUR

Trent Alexander-Arnold has done Liverpool a favour. We think. Here’s what we mean.

Trent Alexander-Arnold will be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season. His contract ends and he’ll take advantage of that to disappear from the club.

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That brings an end to 20 years with the Reds, years that have seen Alexander-Arnold win the lot. The vice-captain ‘wants a new challenge’.

That challenge will almost certainly be Real Madrid. No, that hasn’t been confirmed yet but it’s the worst-kept secret in football.

Madrid attempted to sign him in January, in fact - about as strong as sign as you could get that he was heading there. That bid never arrives unless they’re pretty much certain of signing him.

Liverpool, then, will lose one of their most important players and someone who has been a transformative star for them. It’s a blow and hard to imagine that the team doesn’t get worse.

But there is another side to this. Alexander-Arnold might be doing Liverpool a favour.

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Trent Alexander-Arnold’s favour to Liverpool

Now, let’s start this by admitting we’re clutching at straws. Liverpool offered Alexander-Arnold a long-term contract on big money, suggesting they absolutely do not agree with this stance.

But we still think it’s worth considering.

Alexander-Arnold has played well over 28,000 minutes of senior football since breaking in at Liverpool. He’s been playing long, long seasons since the very start, with the Reds going all the way to the UEFA Champions League final in his very first season and then doing so again the following year.

He’s played regularly and with very few breaks - and that might be starting to have an effect. Alexander-Arnold missed a lot of games last season, playing under 30 Premier League fixtures for the first time.

There was another worrying injury this season, too. Only the fact it came around the international break prevented Alexander-Arnold from missing more games.

It’s a lot of football that would understandably take its toll. We’ve certainly seen his teammates feel that effect, with most fading out as they reached around 30.

But those players also weren’t playing deep, three-matches-a-week seasons in their early 20s. It’s entirely conceivable that Alexander-Arnold actually fades a little earlier than those teammates.

And perhaps we’re already seeing that. So perhaps Liverpool are having a very difficult decision made for them here.

Especially as Conor Bradley is there waiting to develop. There is no better successor to Alexander-Arnold than Bradley, who could become a genuinely world-class player if Liverpool develop him correctly.

That’s more difficult to do with Alexander-Arnold around. His exit might actually mean Liverpool have a better right-back in the coming years than if the Scouser had stayed.

Now, again, this is maybe clutching at straws and it’s certainly looking at things in red-tinted glasses. But there is a positive outcome here and it’s one Liverpool were never going to purposely go for.

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Alexander-Arnold has made the decision for them - and we might see it as a favour in the long-term.