Arne Slot breeds Liverpool concern over Konate being their Rodri as ‘last step’ made difficult

Is Ibrahima Konate’s injury the point after which it all comes crashing down for Liverpool? Probably not, but Arne Slot hasn’t helped.

Pep Guardiola has rarely enjoyed his trips to Anfield. In nine visits as Manchester City boss he’s only won once and that was without a crowd in February 2021 during Covid. This time, on the back of five defeats and a draw, having conceded two or more goals in all of those games, the greatest manager of his generation is staring down the barrel of a battering. Odds are he’ll be conducting post-match interviews as Freddie Krueger without a pre-game trip to the manicurist.

But the fallout from Liverpool’s emphatic win over European champions Real Madrid – not that they count as a Proper Team – offers Guardiola and City a glimmer of hope in a game that could define their season.

‘Now we start the recovery process,’ wrote Ibrahima Konate on Instagram having been helped from the pitch on Wednesday after Madrid substitute Endrick clattered into him in the closing minutes. There’s rarely a quick fix for a knee injury and unconfirmed reports claim he will be out for five or six weeks at the busiest stage of Liverpool’s season. It’s a huge blow.

He’s been brilliant, dominating opposition forwards in all aspects of the game, with a moment against Madrid when he won the ball off Kylian Mbappe and then powered through the midfield to set Liverpool away on an attack one of many this season illustrating his quality as an all-round footballer, not just the brute he’s at times come across as ahead of the season where it’s all come together for him at Anfield.

A formerly jittery centre-back prone to mistakes now has a Virgil van Dijk-like air of poise and authority to his game. As has been (and usually still is) the case with Van Dijk, there’s very little jeopardy when Konate’s involved in a race for the ball, faced up by a winger, pressed in possession by opposition forwards or challenging for the ball in the air. He has every confidence that he will come out on top in every situation, and consequently so do we watching him.

Jarell Quansah is where Konate was a couple of seasons ago. He’s clearly very talented with everything required to be a top centre-back, but as Arne Slot said after the academy graduate gave the ball away for Brighton’s first goal in the Carabao Cup before their second deflected in off him, Quansah needs to take “that last step”.

“For him, it’s that last step maybe to make. He has already shown in the past that he can play a game without these small mistakes. So he is in a bit of an unlucky period when it comes to if he makes a small mistake, it immediately leads to a goal.”

That was one of just four appearances this season for Quansah, along with Liverpool’s other Carabao Cup win over West Ham, two minutes as a substitute in the Champions League against Bayer Leverkusen and the first half of Slot’s first ever Liverpool game on the opening day against Ipswich.

“We don’t have to speak about tactics if we lose so many duels,” Slot said when asked about why Quansah was replaced by Konate at half-time. What was an already brutal snub given the clear plan for Quansah to partner Van Dijk for the season was scrapped after just 45 minutes has been made all the more difficult to process and come back from for the 21-year-old thanks to Konate’s excellence making him undroppable since.

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Perhaps in search of something to disrupt Liverpool’s plain-sailing season on the assumption that they surely can’t continue to make it look this easy, we wonder whether Konate could be their Rodri: the injury after which everything comes crashing down.

Those fears are assuaged if not entirely put to bed by Joe Gomez, who lest we forget partnered Van Dijk through Liverpool’s title-winning season and was hailed by Jurgen Klopp for his “sensational” display against Erling Haaland in a 1-0 win over Manchester City in October 2022.

He’s the obvious choice for Slot as Haaland’s mere presence despite his and City’s poor form means this is not the game in which to test Quansah’s fragile confidence. But Gomez has played even less this season, with just 55 minutes of action in all competitions highlighting why he was so keen to leave Liverpool in the summer.

Konate has already started more Premier League games on the bounce (11) this season than he ever did under Klopp (8), who rotated him, Gomez and Joel Matip as Van Dijk’s partner. His improved performances surely go hand-in-hand with the increased trust shown in him by his new manager. There’s now no doubt that Konate is one of Liverpool’s best two centre-backs; perhaps the best of the lot.

Trust in Konate may be misconstrued as reliance. Gomez is your classic Never Lets Us Down kind of guy and Quansah’s recent struggles feel far more like a bump in the road rather than proof that he’s not destined to play at this level.

But the lack of game time afforded by Slot to his backups has created this tension. Truth is we have no idea whether Konate is Liverpool’s Rodri because we’ve not seen enough of either Gomez or Quansah this season to come to any evidence-based conclusion over the effect of the first-choice absentee, though that lack of game time in itself increases the chances of his injury being a big problem for Liverpool, against City and beyond.