The Ekitike and Isak Show

We finally got a glimpse of Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak on the pitch together for more than 10 minutes against Eintracht Frankfurt. What did we learn?

A football team is built through partnerships. Players link up, from side to side or back to front. Making these relationships harmonious is how a club makes beautiful music.

The lack of established pairings is partly what is holding Liverpool back this season. Whether Arne Slot intends to regularly play Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak together is yet to be revealed but they started up front in the Reds’ 5-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday.

Front twos are not in fashion. Per FBRef, a Premier League team’s starting formation ended in ‘2’ on 56 occasions in 2024/25, 7.4 per cent of the time. Even then, this total included Liverpool fielding Curtis Jones and Dominik Szoboszlai as false 10s against Manchester City, before Pep Guardiola deployed Phil Foden and Omar Marmoush at Old Trafford. They’re hardly Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn.

An article on Not The Top 20, an EFL newsletter, declared 2005/06 as the pinnacle of strike duos. Playing two men up top isn’t even that common in lower league football these days.

It has become something of a break glass option for Liverpool. Jürgen Klopp used variations of 4-4-2 in the autumn of 2022/23 when his side’s form collapsed along with the legs of its central midfielders. Slot had only used English football’s stereotypical formation in a League Cup game at Brighton prior to Wednesday.

Four consecutive defeats will lead a manager to roll a few dice. Ekitike and Isak had only shared the pitch for 16 minutes before starting together in Germany; they had six at Galatasaray before the Frenchman went off injured, then 10 against Manchester United when Slot threw everything he had at the Red Devils.

There was a single pass between the pair in the latter match, Ekitike getting the ball to Isak as Liverpool looked to counter. It’s a shame they didn’t get more than 45 minutes against Frankfurt but it’s interesting to see how they interacted and what moves they made.