James Milner has claimed that Ibrahima Konate looks ‘very strong’ in Liverpool’s pre-season training, as he told the club’s official website.
At one point last season, Liverpool were crying out for centre-backs as several of their star players were sent to the treatment room.
From having to play both Fabinho and Jordan Henderson at the heart of the defence, Jurgen Klopp was searching far and wide to look for solutions to Liverpool’s problems.
But ahead of the new season, Klopp now has an array of defenders to pick from, including superstar Virgil van Dijk and new boy Konate.
Milner shared what the 22-year-old has been like during his first few days of training with his new teammates.
“Very good,” said Milner “He certainly looks like a central defender! He’s obviously very strong, he’s good on the ball, a very good defender positionally.
“I’ve not seen much of him in training but a couple of things he has done have stood out. It’s a strange situation: you obviously go from last season not having too many centre-halves and now we’ve got top-class centre-halves all over the place!
“It’s fantastic. Nat [Phillips] is obviously here and Davo [Ben Davies], Rhysy [Williams] obviously and all the guys in there.
“it’s a great standard of centre-half that we’ve got with everyone pushing each other and that’s exactly what you need.”
It will be interesting to see how Klopp uses Konate next season and how far down the Liverpool centre-back pecking order he is.
Many would think that Van Dijk will be partnered by Joe Gomez in defence, but then there’s also Joel Matip and Nat Phillips, who ended last season in a strong fashion.
Either way, the Reds won’t be worrying about their defensive issues for the new season because now they are stacked up.
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