Jamie Carragher has pinpointed one area of Liverpool’s squad where he believes they still need to strengthen, citing two examples from Manchester City as the mould of players who’d fill that particular shortcoming.
For the past seven years, Andy Robertson has been virtually undroppable at left-back, with Kostas Tsimikas continually forced to play second fiddle to the Scotland captain since coming to Anfield in 2020.
With the ex-Hull defender now into his 30s, and the Reds not having any left-footed centre-backs, the Sky Sports pundit cited that as a void which needs filling for LFC.
VOTE for Empire of the Kop in Best Club Content Creator – Premier League HERE
Carragher told the Fan Debate: “I still think they need a left-sided defender, a new left-back maybe. Listen, Robertson has been amazing, but I just think [after] playing for Jurgen Klopp for five years running up and down the line; Tsimikas comes in and Robertson is still playing with Scotland.
“I’ve said it for a while now, I think we could do with what Man City have got with a [Josko] Gvardiol or a Nathan Ake, someone of that type, a left-footed defender which we don’t really have at centre-back. Someone who can do a little bit of left-back and a little bit of centre-back. I think that’s something that will happen.”
It does seem an anomaly that all of the four centre-backs in Liverpool’s current first-team squad are predominantly right-footed, depriving Slot of the scope to utilise any of his defenders in the same manner that Pep Guardiola has with Gvardiol and Ake at the Etihad Stadium.
Joe Gomez has proven capable of playing anywhere across the backline, but there still appears to be a niche to be filled in terms of a truly left-sided central defender who can easily adapt to full-back.
It’ll be interesting to see if Richard Hughes tries to address that gap in the Reds’ squad in the next couple of transfer windows.
You can view Carragher’s comments below (from 16:07), via The Overlap on YouTube:
