Liverpool may have steamrolled their way to the Premier League title in 2019/20, but it’s easy to forget that they weren’t the favourites to win the league at the start of the season.
Indeed, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City were coming off the back of two seasons where they’d amassed a cumulative total of 198 points, and last season they looked to be on track to repeat the trick for a third time.
However, an injury to Aymeric Laporte saw City find themselves in a lot of defensive trouble for a key part of the campaign, and their lack of adequate replacement cost them dearly.
Unfortunately, City let a brilliant replacement slip through their fingers as they allowed Vincent Kompany to leave the club without really replacing him.
As we all know, Liverpool are undergoing similar defensive injury worries this season, and unfortunately, it looks as though they’re repeated the same mistake as Man City, albeit on a slightly smaller scale.
The Reds allowed Dejan Lovren to leave the club this summer without adequately replacing him and that has now come back to bite them as Joel Matip is currently the only fit senior centre-back they have.
Of course, Kompany is a better player than Lovren, and nobody would argue any differently, but the fact still remains that Liverpool have opted to sell an experienced backup defender and it’s come back to bite them.
Would Lovren have been good enough to lead Liverpool through this tough period? Perhaps not, but you’d rather have an experienced defender who has played in a World Cup final than a player like Rhys Williams who only has a handful of senior games to his name.
Liverpool were the big winners from City’s failure to replace Kompany last term, and unfortunately for the Reds, it looks as though the roles could be reversed this time.
Jurgen Klopp and Michael Edwards should really have seen this coming a mile off.
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