Ibrahima Konaté and Virgil van Dijk: The Wall

Did Liverpool have the Premier League's best central defensive partnership in 2024/25? William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhães want a word.

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Liverpool have fielded a number of absurd partnerships in central defence in their pre-season matches this summer. Ryan Gravenberch, Trey Nyoni, Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas are among the players who have featured at the heart of the backline.

With the Reds only having three senior centre-backs with the new season beginning next week, perhaps Arne Slot is testing out a few emergency options. He will feel confident that his first-choice pairing of Ibrahima Konaté alomgside Virgil van Dijk will remain fit to play the majority of the important games. They featured together in 41 matches last term.

Their impressive record for availability was likely aided by tactical choice. An Opta Analyst article in March noted the Liverpool duo were in the top four outfielders for least distance covered per 90 minutes last season. While Konaté suffered one eight-match absence, his 42 appearances was his most in a club campaign. Van Dijk was available throughout 2024/25.

This meant they had no competition with a decent sample size at Liverpool. The premium pair played 3,278 minutes together, with the second most common duo of Joe Gomez and van Dijk trailing way behind on just 526. The Dutchman had a better record with Konaté anyway, amassing a superior clean sheet percentage in completed games (52 per cent) and non-penalty goals (npg) conceded per 90 minutes (0.82).

Having compiled this data since 2019, it is apparent how stable their partnership was last season. There were only three other instances of a Reds centre-back twosome playing even half as many minutes in any of the preceding five campaigns.

The closest comparable example was Joël Matip with van Dijk in 2021/22, as they worked in tandem for 3,001 minutes. They were also a rarity in the last six years in that they had a better record for conceding non-penalty goals than Ibou and Virgil have had for Slot.

They were better by a sizeable margin too. A team’s defensive record is clearly down to more than the identity of the players in central defence, though.

Konaté and van Dijk could also argue they didn’t need to be at their best all the way to the finish line last season unlike the Liverpool defenders of three years earlier. Most people would say the 2024/25 Premier League title was effectively secured following the 2-0 win at Manchester City; at that point, the Reds’ leading centre-backs were combining to allow 0.72 npg per 90 across the campaign.

Are they best in the business as we head into 2025/26? We can see how the Konaté/van Dijk axis fared against all other duos in the division, with expected goals factored in too.