Liverpool’s Centre-Back Situation -Should the Priorities be Elsewhere in the Market?

Written on 25/07/2024

With the pre-season in full swing, Liverpool boss Arne Slot has had the requisite time to analyse the squad (albeit few of them are yet to join due to international commitments in the summer). There are rumblings that the club will be active in the transfer market in August and aim to make a few deals in the month, preferably before the start of the season. 

While there is a temptation to add a couple of players to strengthen the squad further, the need to make sure that there are enough spaces in the squad to fill is apparent as well. There are a few fringe players that could do with their futures sorted soon depending on what Slot thinks of them. The other side of the coin is that their potential exit is put on hold to make sure enough players are there for the pre-season games before the remaining big hitters come back.

The department in focus for this article is central defence. As of now (on 26th July 2024), Liverpool have six options for two positions - Virgil van Dijk, Jarell Quansah, Ibrahima Konate, Sepp van den Berg, Joe Gomez and Nat Phillips. Among them, Gomez mostly played as a fullback either side last season, Phillips last played a first-team game for the Reds in the 2022/23 season and van den Berg has been on loan at various clubs since 2021, the latest being at Mainz. So, realistically, Slot has three genuine and up to five plausible players.

What I will do is analyse the numbers of four players who played as a centre-back last season (2023/24) and see how they fared (Gomez is excluded for the reason stated above and it does not feel like Phillips has any future at the club).

Virgil van Dijk - still the best at the club

Although he turned 33 this summer, it is a fact that van Dijk is still the best defender at the club, let alone the league and Europe. The only thing is that his minutes might need tweaking to get the best out of him going forward. But, after a tricky 2022/23 campaign, the Dutch captain was somewhere close to his best last season. Here are his on-the-ball and aerial duel numbers below - 

The captain is at the top echelon among Premier League defenders in every metric here. There is still no one better in the world in aerial duels than him. The passing range, as always, was sensational. His style of defending to not dive into tackles makes him one of the least fouling defenders in the game. 

Jarell Quansah - promising breakthrough season

After an encouraging pre-season last time around, former Reds boss Jurgen Klopp had no hesitation to Quansah his chances. To be fair to him, the 21-year-old grabbed them with both hands. Post Joël Matip’s season-ending injury in December, Quansah had to play a lot more games than expected. And early signs tell us that he is going to be a star at Anfield. Here’s his dashboard of the season - 

Not the best in any metric but the signs are encouraging in each of them (makes up for being an all-round prospect at the back). High ball-carrying numbers attract interest. It is as if he is directly replacing Matip in the squad.