Liverpool’s central defenders have come under massive scrutiny after yet another limp showing, this time in the Carabao Cup against Leicester City. The clash saw us lose to the Foxes 2-0 thanks, once again, to poor defending and many pundits have stated that we have to bring in new defenders as soon as possible.
While Virgil van Dijk was our priority signing in defence, we could not complete a deal for the player and instead of bringing in someone else, we ended up getting no one. That must be haunting Jurgen Klopp now as we seem to be dealing with injuries too as we prepare to face Leicester once again, this time in the Premier League.
The Bild (h/t Express) claims that we have targeted another central defender from the Bundesliga, just like Joel Matip, and that player is from RB Leipzig.
The report claims that we want to sign Dayot Upamecano from the Germans and the 18-year-old French defender only joined the Bundesliga side from Red Bull Salzburg in January.
There could be another battle to sign him as the report also adds that the German side want to sign Upamecano on a long-term deal and raise his release clause to a ludicrous €100million.
We will still try to sign the 18-year-old since we are not put off by our success in signing Upamecano’s teammate Naby Keita, who is set to join us before the start of next season.
Leipzig did not want to let go of their star player but we agreed on a deal where we would pay a premium over his release clause. A similar deal looks out of the question for Upamecano since his clause could be raised to €100million.
Signing a young and talented French defender might not be the answer to all our problems. Upamecano doesn’t have a lot of experience of playing at the top level and spending crazy amount of money would not work either since we need someone with Premier League experience.
Things look really tough for us in the defensive end and if Klopp cannot fix this quickly, we will be in a lot of trouble.