Ibrahima Konate and his move to Liverpool.

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At the end of last season Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool had just barely scraped into the UEFA Champions League with, a side that had won the league with 99 points, then finished with 30 points fewer.

In part that has to do with the amount injuries that Liverpool had last season, with every one of their available centre backs all being out with long term injuries.

This in turn lead to the entire of Liverpool’s structure being destroyed as midfielders in Henderson and Fabinho having to deputise at centre back, due to this lack of coverage in that position.

Unsurprisingly this summer, Klopp chose to finally bring in a quality player in 22 year old Ibrahim Konate in a reported £36 million deal from German club RB Leipzig.

Konate who had been with Die Roten for the last 4 years had impressed massively and earned a lot of plaudits with his time in Germany.

A left footed centre back the Frenchman, played alongside his fellow compatriot in Dayot Upamaceno who himself left Leipzig this summer to move to another German club Bayern Munich.

A very calm presence at the back with him being very physically imposing on opposition teams with him being 6’4 means that when it comes to aerial challenges most of the time there would only be one winner.

However one problem that Konate does have is his injury record with in the last 2 years similarly to his Anfield defenders, in the 19/20 season Konate missed over 30 games of football for Leipzig with a torn muscle fibre keeping him on the sidelines.

With a further ankle injury from last season it has meant that before this season there were a lot of concerns about the reliability that Konate has for Liverpool.

Since joining Liverpool in the summer Konate has made a handful of appearances, mostly remaining on the bench being mostly because of the form of Van Dijk along with competition from Joel Matip and Joe Gomez.

When Konate has played though he has been impressive and a reliable presence at the back making 7 appearances in all competitions keeping a clean sheet in 5 of them including a famous 5-0 win away against bitter rivals Manchester United.

At 22 years old, Konate is clearly seen by Liverpool as a long term fixture at the club and potentially the guy to replace Van Dijk.