Dejan Lovren’s renaissance at the club has been impressive. Nights like the one when Broussard Dortmund came to Anfield and left with their tail between their legs seemed to be the making of him. He’s still not quite good enough to be considered one of Klopp’s first-choice defenders, however, and I’d be a lot happier if he was relegated to being a squad player next season. J\u00fcrgen’s style of play means that the defence is always likely to be exposed more than someone like Antonio Conte’s, for example, yet it’s also fair to say that ours has under-performed this season. Lovren’s part of the reason for that and it’s probably time he stopped being one of our regular starters.<\/p>\n
Of course the issue is that our options at the back currently mean that Klopp hasn’t got a whole heap of choice when it comes to who gets picked for games. Reports from earlier in the season suggested that we had deliberately not signed any defenders in order to keep the path clear for Joe Gomez to graduate to the starting XI. On the one hand that’s great and most supporters would be keen to see the manager develop talent we’ve already got on our books when possible. On the other hand that puts a lot of pressure on the youngster’s shoulders and also means we’re probably going to have to see him learn on the job in the coming years. Is a first-choice pairing of Gomez and Matip really a league title winning one? I’m not so sure.<\/p>\n
Ragnar Klavan looked like an absolute steal when we first saw him play. The Estonian appeared to be calm, composed and assured during his initial appearances and it finally seemed as though we’d bought a squad player we could count on. Though he’s still chucked in a couple of decent performances – City at home on New Year’s Eve being a standout – he’s also had more than a couple of dodgy games to leave people thinking ‘here we go again’. He’s the kind of player that would be fine in the League Cup or dead rubber Champions League games should we make it there, but he’s little more than that.<\/p>\n
almonfoto \/ shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n
Finally there’s Lucas Leiva, Liverpool’s own cat with nine lives. The Brazilian seems to have been converted in the a centre-half by J\u00fcrgen Klopp and it’s just as well. On the few occasions he’s started in his favoured spot of midfield so far this season he’s been embarrassed and embarrassing. I never want to see him play in the middle of the park for us again, but is good enough to keep as a defensive squad player? Maybe. I’ll confess that I thought he’d get shown up by Spurs when they came to Anfield recently, but instead he owned Harry Kane and was instrumental to our front-footed style of play.<\/p>\n
If Lucas was finally sold in the summer I wouldn’t be heart-broken. The temptation to use him in midfield against to so-called ‘lesser’ teams has proven to great for the manager to resist at times, so it’s probably best if the option was taken away from him altogether. That said, I can see how he’d be a useful player to turn to as a defender against the teams who are going to set-up a low block and only have one attacker on the pitch, so if Klopp decides to keep him for just that purpose then I’d understand. Given he’s probably the manager’s fourth-choice centre-back, he’s probably the least of our problems.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
So there you have it. Giving our defensive unit a sort-of forensic look over leaves us with the reality of having a goalkeeper and a left-back who should be sold at the first available opportunity. Klopp might decided to make Danny Ward our number 2 behind Loris Karius next season, or he might think that buying a new first-choice goalkeeper is the better option. He’ll need at least one new left-back and probably two, depending on how he seems James Milner. He also desperately needs to overhaul the centre of our defence.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some people might lump Jordan Henderson into the defensive unit, but I think it makes more sense to speak of the captain in relation to our other midfielders. For that reason I’ll be doing just that later in the week…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Any time there’s a bit of a break between football matches is a good chance to have a look at how the squad is shaping up. I did this very thing before the season began, exploring the players J\u00fcrgen Klopp would be able to turn to as the season wore on. Now we’ve got just thirteen games left of the campaign and, barring some sort of miracle, will be ending it trophyless once again. We crashed out of the FA Cup at the hands of Wolves and were beaten in two League Cup legs by Saints, with the weakness of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}