Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp explained fielding Cody Gakpo in midfield for Sunday's 1-1 draw at Chelsea.
Klopp admits he tried Gakpo in a withdrawn role on the day.
He explained, "He was an eight. He had to do what an eight has to do... he played that pretty much all pre-season. He can play different positions. For players that's very important in modern football that we should get rid of these [set positions]. When we decided everybody can have their own number on the back then the No.2 was not a No.2 anymore and a No.6 was not a No.6 anymore... that was the first step in the right direction.
"I think modern football is like that. Players can play different positions and Dom Szoboszlai didn't play the position in his former club as well, he played more from the wing. Defensively, especially, offensively he was more half-space. So, the role suits him, definitely. He is for us super-important. I think today you could see the first game of the season [there were] a lot of spaces to cover, gaps to close and that was actually our problem in the game.
"We tried to close the gaps by dropping instead of stepping in but we did in the beginning. Then they could find Sterling between the lines, James was all of a sudden in the game, Chilwell better in the game with his things. We should've solved it better.
"The best way to avoid these kind of things [is] obviously controlling the game [which] we could've done because when we did that we passed in the right moment and kept the ball in the right moment and created one [v] one situations on the wing, so it was really tricky for Chelsea to deal with. It's the first game, not the last, so we have a lot of things to improve [there's] no doubt about that, but I saw already a good basis."