The start of each season is always littered with incoming and outgoing players but when it’s come to loan deals for Liverpool in this campaign, it’s been far from smooth sailing.
As reported on liverpoolfc.com: ‘Billy Koumetio has returned to Liverpool from his loan spell with French side USL Dunkerque’.
The defender made just nine appearances for the second tier French club, who sit second-bottom of their division at present.
The 21-year-old has two senior appearances for the Reds but it seems clear now that his long-term future will be played out away from Anfield, due to his failure to impress so far.
What seems like a bigger issue though is how many of these short-term deals have failed for the the club this season, as many have already ended in disappointment.
Other than Tyler Morton at Hull City, Sepp van den Berg with Mainz and Owen Beck at Dundee (who has returned to add depth at left-back given injuries to Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas) – it’s been a pretty poor showing.
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Nat Phillips (Celtic), Rhys Williams (Aberdeen), Calvin Ramsay (Preston), Fabio Carvalho (RB Leipzig but now at Hull City) and James Balagizi (Wigan) were all also sent back to the AXA Training Centre and will be soon joined by the returning of the French centre-back.
David Woodfine was the former and remarkably successful director of loan management and it’s safe to say that we could be doing a lot better in this department, after not replacing him properly this summer.
Let’s hope any more deals completed for the second-half of the campaign work a lot better.
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