Liverpool Legend Questions Klopp’s Decision To Let Go Of Team’s Best Defender

Liverpool’s defensive frailties are there for all to see after our poor start to the season in terms of the defence. We have conceded 11 goals from the opening 6 games of the league campaign and were at it again as we conceded 2 sloppy goals against Leicester.

While we did win the game thanks to the 3 goals we scored, there were a number of questions raised not only about our goalkeeper Simon Mignolet but also our defensive pairing of Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip.

There are many who believe that we should have held onto Mamadou Sakho. With us failing to sign Van Dijk, even Reds legend Phil Thompson questioned as to why we let go of Sakho.

“Our best defender at the start of this season has been allowed to leave,” Thompson was quoted by the Metro when he spoke to Sky Sports.

“Mamadou Sakho was our best defender. He was a warrior, a fighter, a battler – all those things and you saw it at Crystal Palace last season.”

The former Red also added that problems happen in football and that should not have been a reason to sell the French international. We all know that Jurgen Klopp and Sakho had issues regarding discipline and that even saw the French defender stay frozen out of the team before he was allowed to join Palace on loan last winter.

“He was like that at Liverpool. I know there’s fallouts in football all the time but somewhere along the line you can’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

“He should have made up with the boy, ban him for three or four months and then bring him back in.”

Thompson was also upset that we didn’t keep Sakho when we knew the deal for Van Dijk was failing.

“And now you lose out to Van Dijk for whatever reason that happened so surely you would be keeping Sakho.”

Sakho did look like a better defender when he was playing for Palace but his knee injury during the end of last campaign curtailed his season. It would have been interesting to see just how good he might have turned out to be with Joel Matip alongside him but that is a story for some other day.

For our sake, let’s hope that Klopp and the team can sort out the defence because if we continue leaking goals at this rate, it might be tough to even make it to the top four this campaign.