Liverpool have just made an announcement that’s very behind the times – Our View

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Deadline day was frustrating for Liverpool.

Reds supporters up and down the country were hoping for a last-gasp blockbuster signing. The Merseyside club had been linked with a number of midfielders and a number of attackers this summer, and it seemed at one point as though they’d get one.

However, August 31^st came and went and the only announcements we got from Liverpool were two new contracts.

A new deal for Jordan Henderson was a very welcomed piece of news. The skipper is a key player and fans were over the moon to see him come in.

Unfortunately, we can’t quite say the same about Nat Phillips’ contract extension, and it has to be said that the timing of this announcement was rather strange.

If we’re being honest, giving Phillips a new contract earlier this summer would have made the world of sense. He was a key man towards the back-end of last season, and based on those performances he’d earned a new deal.

However, three months after the end of last season the landscape has changed at Liverpool, especially at centre-back.

Virgil van Dijk and Joel Matip have made triumphant returns from injury, Ibrahima Konate has signed and Joe Gomez is slowly but surely getting back to his best.

It’s impossible to not adore Phillips’ story and the contributions he made at Anfield last season, but right now he’s the Reds’ fifth-choice centre-back, and that’s been abundantly clear for a number of weeks.

A new deal back in May would have made sense, Konate hadn’t signed, Matip’s future was looking a bit uncertain and we didn’t know how van Dijk would recover.

However, at the time of Phillips’ new deal being signed, we’d already seen van Dijk back to his best, Matip looks like a man reborn while Konate and Gomez are waiting in the wings.

The timing of this announcement was rather baffling – it would have made sense a few months ago, but now it’s very hard to rationalise the Reds’ thinking.

Phillips may end up proving us all wrong and usurping the likes of Matip and Konate this season, but in our view, it looks a lot more likely that he’ll find appearances hard to come by and his stock will fall.