Ibrahima Konate, who has emerged as Liverpool’s no.1 centre-back target, has suffered from injuries the past two seasons – undeniably.
A muscle fibre injury basically wrote off the 2019/20 season, and he’s failed to get regular minutes since, with smaller, niggling injuries arriving since.
Naturally, it’s caused Liverpool fans online some worry – given the whole point we need central defensive enforcements is because currently we have our three best ones out for the season!
Anna Woodberry on Twitter has written a long thread in which she outlines Konate’s injury past and reveals some misunderstanding in its regard.
You can click on the first tweet and unravel it, to read it all:
UNDERSTANDING IBRAHIMA KONATE'S INJURY RECORD
Since the Ornstein story broke that Liverpool are close to signing RB Leipzig centre-back Ibrahima Konate, fans are debating whether this is a good move given the 21-year-old's injury record, so let's take a closer look… (1/n)
— Anna Woodberry (@anna_woodberry) March 29, 2021
We can almost see her point, but if the argument is that ‘Konate was only as injured as Gomez last season, and only as injured as Thiago this,’ that’s like – pretty bad!
This graphic from the Athletic, probably outlines the situation a little better:
You can see that since his big injury, he’s basically not played consistent football.
Does that make his potential signing a risk? For us at EOTK, yes.
But we’re more than happy to trust the judgement of Michael Edwards and Jurgen Klopp.
Potential wise, Konate is huge. And if it pays off, we could have Virgil van Dijk starting alongside a man capable of following in his footsteps!