The genius £12m Premier League gem Liverpool must sign now to fix serious defence fears

It’s fair to say that Liverpool supporters, as a whole, are feeling just a little jittery ahead of the new Premier League season. The club may have appointed a highly impressive manager in Andoni Iraola, but there’s a growing concern that he still hasn’t been given all of the tools required to do his job properly.

The search for a replacement for the departed Mohamed Salah has been the primary source of concern this summer, but now the state of the defence is starting to provoke some worries as well – and those worries weren’t allayed by a 4-2 pre-season defeat to Leeds United.

Liverpool currently have just four first-team centre-backs in their squad, and only one of them is heading into the new season without lingering fitness concerns hanging over them. Are fears about their defensive solidity legitimate, though, and should they dip into the transfer market to find a solution?

Why Liverpool have every reason to be worried about their defence

None of Liverpool’s more senior centre-halves were available for the defeat to Leeds in Chicago on Sunday – not that many of them can truly be described as being senior in any meaningful sense.

Virgil van Dijk, who does fit that description, is being rested after playing in the World Cup. Joe Gomez is injured, again, and is expected to miss the start of the new season. Giovanni Leoni and new signing Jérémy Jacquet are still recovering from serious injuries sustained last season and have yet to return to full training.

As it stands, Liverpool are headed into their curtain-raiser against Newcastle with just three centre-backs likely to be available, two of whom are both young and easing their way back into action after lengthy lay-offs. Allowing Ibrahima Konaté to leave on a free transfer is starting to look like a rather substantial misstep.

19-year-old Leoni is expected to rejoin first-team training in the coming days after recovering from the ACL injury which wrecked his debut season at Anfield. He should be joined by Jacquet, who joined from Rennes in a deal worth £60m but hasn’t played since February due to a shoulder injury.

Even if both are able to get back into the swing of things at speed, they are deeply inexperienced, while Gomez is a player who was seen as no more than a back-up level player by either Arne Slot or Jürgen Klopp. Perhaps one or two of them can step up and provide Van Dijk with the reliable partner he needs, but when the injury concerns are factored in it would perhaps be rather fortunate were that to be the case.

This is a team that already has defensive frailties. They conceded nearly twice as many goals as champions Arsenal last season – 53 to 27 – and recently-acquired full-backs Jeremie Frimpong and Miloš Kerkez have yet to be wholly convincing. The loss of the dependable Andrew Robertson may not be quite as problematic as the departure of Konaté, but it plays into the sense of a defence which is both too young and insufficiently rigid.

Both Leoni and Jacquet are very talented, but aren’t proven at the Premier League level yet and will likely need time to get up to speed – and with Gomez seemingly never far from another spell on the treatment table, there is a very real worry about how many fitness issues Liverpool could possibly sustain over the course of a long campaign before a lack of depth came back to bite them.

Against Leeds, the centre-back pairing used by Iraola was academy product Luke Chambers, who has spent most of the last few years on loan lower down the league ladder, and 18-year-old newcomer Ifeanyi Ndukwe, who did little to suggest that he was ready for the first team as yet. Even if Leoni, Jacquet and Gomez play their best football, there is surely a need to add a more experienced defender to the rotation.

The Sunderland defender who’s precisely what Liverpool need this summer

As yet, Liverpool have shown little sign of making a move for a centre-back. The focus has been on getting a deal for a winger over the line – PSG’s Bradley Barcola appears to be the primary target as it stands, although there are significant obstacles to a deal which have not yet been overcome.

The rumour mill has been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject of a defender. If Liverpool are indeed working towards such a signing for, they have kept it close to their chests. The suspicion is that until the club know how much money they will need to spend to sort the right wing out, they want to keep their powder dry in other positions.

In the meantime, potential targets are moving elsewhere. Ousmane Diomande, the Sporting defender long monitored by Liverpool, is closing in on a move to Nottingham Forest which is expected to be worth around £30m. Seemingly exactly the kind of ball-playing centre-back that the club need to complement Van Dijk, it’s somewhat surprising that they are apparently content to pass up the chance to sign him at a very reasonable price.

In an ideal world, Liverpool could do with a defender who has some years under his belt and who can also operate at right-back, another position which has been made to look rather thin thanks to a serious injury, in this case to Conor Bradley – but also someone who wouldn’t necessarily break the bank. That’s a rather restrictive set of parameters for a search.

A player like Sunderland’s Nordi Mukiele – who was linked with a move to Liverpool last year before he went to the Stadium of Light – would fit the bill. Able to play in both positions with ease and proven at the Premier League level, he only cost the Black Cats £12m.

He’d probably be rather more expensive now given that his reputation has increased significantly and that he’s only one year into a four-year contract, but Mukiele provides a model for the kind of defender Liverpool need – versatile, comfortable on the ball, strong in one-on-one situations and good in the air.

Heaven knows whether Liverpool have a player like Mukiele – or even Mukiele himself – in mind, but he’s the model in many ways. The only thing that seems certain is that a sticking plaster of some kind is required to cover up a rather worrying wound. Liverpool’s defence is thin and ailing, and if it isn’t reinforced it’s difficult to see how their back line can improve sufficiently to put them back into competition for the title.