Liverpool’s Defensive Plan Feels Half-Finished

I keep coming back to the same feeling when I look at Liverpool’s defence: we’re not miles away, but it feels half-finished. You can see the shape of a plan in places, then there’s a big blank space next to it where the certainty should be.

Start with Joe Gomez. Great lad, proper servant to the club, and he’s still useful because he can cover pretty much anywhere across the back line. But if we’re being honest, he doesn’t feel like “the future” in any one position, more the kind of player you’re delighted to have around until the point you need to refresh the whole group. The issue, as ever, is fitness. His value is in being available when the squad needs patching up.

Full-backs: clear idea, unclear depth

The full-back situation is where it gets messy. If the long-term idea is to evolve the left side, you can understand it. Robertson has been a monster for years, but time catches everyone, and there’s always a moment when you go from “still fine” to “we probably need to act now”. If we’re talking about replacing both Robertson and Tsimikas, that’s not a tweak, that’s a reset.

And even if you bring in someone like Kerkez and he turns into the consistent version you hope for, you still need proper competition. Not just a back-up who plays in the cups, but someone who can start three league games in a row without it feeling like you’re holding your breath.

On the right, I like Conor Bradley a lot, but his style is all action. It’s brave, it’s aggressive, and it’s also the kind of game that can lead to knocks and silly suspensions. That doesn’t make him unreliable, it just means Liverpool can’t treat him as the one solution.

Centre-halves: age, contracts and the next baton pass

Then there’s the middle. Virgil van Dijk still sets the tone, but he’s another year older and he doesn’t look quite as untouchable as he once did. That decline had to come at some point. The question is whether the club are planning a smooth transition or leaving it late and hoping it’s fine.

If Leoni has been brought in with “long-term Virgil successor” in mind, fair enough, but that still leaves the other side. Ibrahima Konate’s situation feels like a cloud. When a contract starts getting talked about more than performances, it’s never ideal, and shaky form just magnifies everything.

So what’s the actual strategy?

What really sticks out is the Guehi-shaped gap in the thinking. If Liverpool were prepared to go for him at a certain price earlier, why not go straight back in now? Maybe the club aren’t convinced he’s the right fit, or maybe it’s a summer gamble, but either way it’s a risky way to run a defence that’s already at a turning point.

When you sketch it out, you can imagine a squad with Kerkez plus a new left-back, Virgil alongside Leoni, Konate competing with Guehi, and a right-back group of Bradley with Frimpong and Ramsey involved, with Gomez as the cover-all. It doesn’t sound mad. It just sounds like something that needs committing to, rather than drifting into.

Written by Pompey Rouge: 20 January 2026