Alisson Becker made the fewest appearances of his six years at Liverpool in one season, yet he was still incredibly consistent. Becker is from Brazil.

In just 28 Premier League games over 23/24 for Liverpool’s first team, backup Caoimhin Kelleher occasionally filled in admirably, but Alisson is still the clear first pick at Anfield.

The opportunity to work with a goalkeeper of such exceptional rarity will be extremely alluring for new head coach Arne Slot, whose hiring was revealed on Monday for a three-year term.

After Virgil van Dijk was sent off, the goalkeeper’s heroics in the turnaround match against Newcastle in late August kept the 10 men in the game. Darwin Nunez had the opportunity to score twice in the closing minutes to cap off an incredible away triumph, but the host Magpies were unable to extend their lead due to a few particularly spectacular saves.

It was quite sad for the former Roma player to lose the contentious 2-1 match against Tottenham in late September as well. After making several saves against players like James Maddison, Son Heung-min, and Dejan Kulusevski to keep the 10 and then nine men in the game, Joel Matip’s error allowed the hosts to win in stoppage time. Much later in the season, in a 1-0 home loss to Crystal Palace, an amazing reflexive stop to deny Jean-Philippe Mateta also deserved more than to happen.

While Alisson made a few impressive stops to deny Tomas Soucek and Matty Cash in Anfield victories over West Ham and Aston Villa, his overall play is most notable for how ordinary it looks for the most part. That’s the way he’s always played goalkeeping, and season after season he’s starting to look more and more like some of the greats who came before him, like the late Ray Clemence and Bruce Grobbelaar.

Erling Haaland opened the score at the Etihad in November after he slipped while attempting to clear the ball in the 1-1 draw with Manchester City. There was also a terrible mix-up with Van Dijk in the 3-1 loss to Arsenal in February, but other than that, there wasn’t much to criticize on the field.

Even though Kelleher has only appeared in six fewer games, Alisson may use a longer season free of injuries in order to expand considerably on his 263 appearances at Anfield thus far.

If he stays healthy, Alisson will have an opportunity to enhance his output because the Champions League is once again the goal rather than the Europa League, where rotation is simpler to justify. If events on the day at Wembley had gone differently, missing the Carabao Cup final could have been frustrating.

In recent days, there have been rumors that the Pro League is increasing its charm offensive in an attempt to aggressively seek Europe’s top players, including Alisson, after shady ties to Saudi Arabia revealed.

Liverpool will be fighting to hang on to one of the best goalkeepers in the league as they try to improve on a revamped roster that saw a lot of change over the summer.

In 23/24, one of Anfield’s all-time great goalkeepers proved why he has that reputation, but with a hamstring injury that at one point threatened to ruin his career, the next obstacle is obvious.