Liverpool's Midfield Dilemma: The Case for Adam Wharton
Liverpool’s midfield has become the talking point of their summer – and now a familiar voice from the lower leagues is calling for a £100m solution.
Darragh MacAnthony, the outspoken Peterborough United chairman and lifelong Liverpool supporter, has urged the club to go all in for Crystal Palace’s Adam Wharton before the window shuts.
“Bring in Wharton, let Mac Allister go”
Speaking on talkSPORT’s White and Jordan show, MacAnthony didn’t bother with diplomacy. He went straight for the heart of Liverpool’s midfield debate.
“I’d love them to sign Adam Wharton,” he said. “I think [Alexis] Mac Allister, for me, his legs were gone last year. It was only when he put an Argentina shirt on that his legs reappeared.
If you could do business there with him going, I think you bring [Wharton] in and you’ve got a player for the next seven, eight years that will be a starter. He’s got so much upside and potential in him. Even if he costs £85m-£100m or whatever else, you’re getting the player for the long-term.”
It was a bold suggestion. Move on a World Cup winner, throw close to nine figures at a 22-year-old with one full Premier League season behind him, and rebuild the centre of the pitch around him.
But it speaks to a wider unease.
A busy window, but a familiar gap
Liverpool have not stood still this summer. Jeremy Jacquet has arrived to bolster the defence, Ronald Araujo has come in on loan, and Victor Munoz has been added out wide. Harvey Elliott is back from his short and stuttering spell at Aston Villa.
Yet the core of the midfield remains largely untouched.
That stability might look reassuring on paper. On the pitch, the picture has been more troubling. The defeat to Monaco on Sunday exposed the same old flaw: a lack of an elite, natural holding midfielder.
The Liverpool Echo’s Ian Doyle described how the team “became disjointed and far too easy to play through” after going 2-0 up. James Pearce, writing in The Athletic, called it “a worry” that the club have still not signed a specialist no.6 to ease the strain on Ryan Gravenberch.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who watched Liverpool last season. Control for spells, chaos when the structure breaks, and a glaring hole in front of the back four when the game opens up.
Why Wharton?
On the face of it, Wharton is not the archetypal destroyer. He is not a slide-tackling enforcer who lives for last-ditch interventions. His game is more subtle, more about anticipation and tempo than sheer physicality.
But the numbers from last season show why people inside the game have taken notice.
Across the 2025/26 Premier League campaign, Wharton ranked in the 95th percentile among his positional peers for big chances created per 90 minutes (0.49) and in the 84th for overall chances created (1.55). He married that creativity with graft: 5.8 recoveries per 90 (85th percentile), strong work in winning possession in advanced areas, and solid tackling and duels output.
Declan Rice, hardly an easy man to impress in that area of the pitch, has already labelled him a “top-level” player. Seventy Premier League appearances for Crystal Palace have hardened him, sharpened him, and proved that his talent translates beyond hype.
He wins the ball. He progresses it. He starts attacks. For a Liverpool side that wants to suffocate opponents and then slice through them, that profile is hard to ignore.
The Barcola factor and the clock
There is a problem, though. Liverpool’s big-money focus right now lies elsewhere.
The club are pushing to land Paris Saint-Germain winger Bradley Barcola, a move that would demand a hefty fee and a significant chunk of the remaining budget. To then pivot to another major outlay on Wharton in the final weeks of the window would require either a major sale or a dramatic change in strategy.
Earlier in the summer, Liverpool were linked with Wharton, but those whispers have gone quiet. No live talks, no fresh noise. Just the lingering sense that a player who fits so many of their needs might end up staying put – or moving somewhere else.
From the outside, the logic is clear. The squad is not short on midfield bodies compared to other areas. But numbers are not the issue. Profile is.
MacAnthony’s argument cuts right through that nuance. He sees a midfield that ran out of legs and ideas too often last season, a glaring lack of a long-term anchor, and a 22-year-old at Palace who looks ready to take that role for most of the next decade.
The price tag? Eye-watering. The upside? Equally so.
Liverpool may not move for Adam Wharton before this window closes. The finances, the Barcola pursuit, the club’s internal valuations – they all point towards patience rather than a late, wild swing.
But if the same problems resurface once the real games start, and that no.6 void continues to drag at their ambitions, the question will hang in the air: was this the summer to gamble big on the next great Anfield midfielder, and did they let him stay in south London instead?
