Mohamed Salah’s form has rightly hogged the headlines, but Liverpool’s recent rediscovering of their professional 2-0 wins from the start of the season has shined a light on their defence too.
On the latest episode of Walk On, Tony Evans, James Pearce and Andy Jones highlighted the impact of Ibrahima Konate, who has shaken off the disappointment of not being in Arne Slot’s starting XI at the start of the season to establish a formidable partnership in central defence with Virgil van Dijk.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on the Walk On feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Tony: One player who has been very impressive over the last few months is Ibrahima Konate. He’s gone under the radar, hasn’t he?
James: Yeah, he has been back to his brilliant best. He had a real wobble towards the end of the Jurgen Klopp era. Jarell Quansah was regularly starting games ahead of him. He had a real shocker in the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park last April. It was weird to see because you thought, ‘How has he managed to lose his way to this extent?’.
He has benefitted from this new era, the freshness, the attention to detail and Arne Slot’s tactical acumen and man-management. It has all helped to get him back to the level we knew he could reach. Andy spoke before about the new regime being able to keep players fit for longer. Konate is a good example of that — he has suffered just one injury this season. He’s been brilliant.
One thing that is probably going under the radar is his contract situation. There’s been so much focus on Van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold but Konate is not far behind in urgency — come the summer, he’ll be down to his last year. He’s only 25, so his best years are still ahead. His contract needs to be addressed because it would be very difficult and very expensive to find someone as commanding and dominant in that back line as Konate has been for Liverpool this season.
Tony: No trophies yet… but we’re the king of contracts, aren’t we? Andy you look ahead to next week when we play Paris Saint-Germain — they’ve got to be keeping a close eye on Konate, haven’t they?
Andy: Everyone in Europe should be because he’s elevated himself to that next level. He is now world class. At times, you could debate quite where he sits among the elite centre-backs in Europe but he’s definitely in that top bracket now, something he’s proved with his performances.
Everyone will be looking at his contract situation. The French connection there with PSG makes a lot of sense. Liverpool will probably regret not sorting this one out earlier because if they’d sorted his contract out after that Merseyside derby (the 2-0 defeat last season), they’d be getting a much more club-friendly price than they will be getting now. Like Salah and Van Dijk, who are putting together these unbelievable seasons, suddenly the ball’s in Konate’s court of, ‘You’ve got to pay me the big bucks too now, mate’.
Liverpool might be looking at it and going, ‘We’ve got plenty of time, there are loads of months left on that contract’, when you compare it to what they’re doing with the current three who are out of contract at the end of this season. It feels like the summer is hopefully when we’ll see that boxed off and everyone can carry on feeling great about Konate’s career at Liverpool.
You can listen to full episodes of Walk On for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
(Top photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
