Wirtz In! Quansah Out? Guéhi In? Konaté Out? Isak In? Robbo Out? Kerkez In! (Shake It All About)
Hokey Cokey! Lots of ins and outs, but limited churn (initially) for the starting XI
Well, I didn’t see that coming, with Jarell Quansah set for Leverkusen, and various major transfer rumours hotting up.
But I didn’t see Florian Wirtz coming, and the beauty of Liverpool’s transfers this past decade, as well as how well they’ve generally worked out, is how often they are out of the blue. Sometimes word will leak, often by the selling club, but Wirtz was heading to Man City or Bayern. Then, boom!
Now there’s talk of Alexander Isak to Liverpool. I felt he was nailed on to stay and Newcastle, and the fee would be too steep; but if you look at how much Liverpool can raise by selling players who would not be in the XI for the coming season, it’s close to £300m – and that’s excluding Luis Díaz who may now stay with Barcelona moving on to Nico Williams, and excluding Cody Gakpo, who Bayern seem to want but who seems important to Liverpool. It’s also a lot of pure profit on such sales.
After a summer of stability in the squad in 2024 but massive change behind the scenes and in the dugout, this seems like the time the Reds are pushing hard to take it up another notch; but also trimming the squad of several of its fringe players, in some cases where the players feel ready to be starters, but are not yet good enough to do so for the champions.
As I write, The Athletic have said “Liverpool have reached an agreement with Bournemouth to sign Milos Kerkez in a deal worth around £40million”, and it will be concluded next week. Meanwhile, the blacked-out limos have deposited Wirtz at the AXA. (No confirmation yet that Alexander Isak was the driver.)
It seems that Quansah, one of many excellent but not “first XI” younger players is set to join the club Wirtz has left, Bayer Leverkusen; while talk is of Marc Guéhi, who has just a year left on his Palace contract, being the target to replace Quansah, while Liverpool have been linked to Ajax’s versatile teenage defender Jorrel Hato for some time.
Then there’s Ibrahima Konaté, who may be kept for his final year if he doesn’t sign a new deal (shades of Brand Trent), but Liverpool have kept half a dozen important players rather than selling them a year early, albeit mostly with players in or entering their 30s. What does Konaté want to do?
Guéhi is a modern defender. I’m not generally a big fan of merely 6ft centre-backs, but if you’re going to get one, they need to be good at everything, as you’ll lose some aerial dominance.
Guéhi actually isn’t bad in the air for his height, and strength and leap are obviously factors too; just, on average, big guys win more; and bigger older guys, even more.
(He’s about the same in the air as Joe Gomez, who is 6’2”, but was more of a ground player, circa 55% when centre-back, albeit centre-backs who play full-back can win loads more, obviously. The best centre-backs are like Virgil van Dijk, up around 75% season after season; and obviously Liverpool still have Virgil van Dijk.)
A smaller, faster, stronger and/or more mobile centre-back is also far better if also alongside an aerial giant, and Liverpool’s captain is one of those. The same if they’re technically gifted, as Guéhi is; more so than Konaté, for sure.
You can sacrifice some height if the team already has height, for a more aggressive ground game and faster covering and being quicker on the turn, and swifter over the first yard (whereas the bigger guys tend to need a bit more time to get to top speed).
Today, of course, is mostly about the arrival of Wirtz.
I wrote the other day that Wirtz is the 5th best finisher out of the 100+ major names I assessed, in terms of exceeding the xG per shot, in a study covering c.45,000 efforts at goal by those players since 2017.
But turns out, if you dig deeper into the data, he’s even better (more in a future piece).
Then, the rest of the transfer business, in this crazy window. Will Palace be forced to sell Guéhi a year early, and indeed, will Liverpool do the same with Konaté? Certainly someone will come in with Quansah going.
There are so many questions to answer, as Liverpool improve on the XI and upgrade the squad, but not without losing several fringe players.
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