The Ibrahima Konaté Stat Showing Liverpool's Improvement
Ibrahima Konaté looks back to his best, even outperforming Virgil van Dijk at his key attribute. Other Ibou stats explain why he and Liverpool have improved.
This week’s free newsletter looked at Liverpool’s ability to restrict their opponents’ chances once the Reds hold a one-goal advantage. A big part of this has been thanks to the return of form and fitness of Ibrahima Konaté.
It remains to be seen if the latter ‘f’ will hold. In each of his first three campaigns with the Reds, Konaté played somewhere between 43.5 and 49.0 per cent of the possible minutes. He is at 92.5 in 2024/25, after only being on the bench for the season opener.
Not that his absences have all been down to injuries. The French international was only unavailable for two games in his debut season, Joël Matip’s fine form often keeping him on the bench. If that felt fair, being kept out of the side by Jarell Quansah in his rookie season shows how Konaté’s performance level dipped at the end of the Jürgen Klopp era.
He looks to be back to his best. It’s remarkable that the 25-year-old has regained that level, considering the circumstances. He spent Euro 2024 entirely on the bench, then only made two pre-season appearances before needing to be introduced at half time against Ipswich. Konaté hit the ground running under Arne Slot, and (goal-costing error against Wolves aside) he has barely looked back.
The new Liverpool head coach deserves credit for the improvement. What instructions Slot has imparted to Konaté will remain between them. The player’s data, some of which was recently highlighted by Michael Reid on the LFCTV Review Show, helps illustrate that what has been asked of the French central defender has changed this season.
A big table of data like this can spark a chain of thoughts processing in interesting directions. The stand out statistic is Konaté’s aerial duel success rate of 86.2 per cent. This is above anything Virgil van Dijk has ever posted for the Reds, which is all the context you really need when discussing prowess in the air.
It may not last. If you search for players with that high a win rate across a big league season, there are very few (see below). Equally, further context than a simple comparison with Virgil is enlightening.
Aerial duels can occur at either end of the pitch. Konaté winning one in Wolves’ box at Molineux enabled him to score his first Premier League goal. A centre-back’s bread and butter are their duels in their own half, though. In this regard, Liverpool’s number five is at 90 per cent, with 18 won from 20 contested.
Having a better record in the air in part explains why his headed clearances per 90 minutes rate is higher than it has been in any of the previous three seasons. An increase in a centre-back’s numbers shows they’ve had more defending to do, which could breed unease. In this instance it is a positive.
More headed clearances means opposing teams are having to get into the defender’s penalty area via aerial deliveries rather than passes. This in turn means the chances they can generate are often headed, so of lower quality.
Liverpool’s rate for conceding passes into their box is lower than it was in any of the past six seasons. If we add crosses to the mix, 2024/25 is a little behind 2018/19 and 2021/22, but those were campaigns in which the Reds reached at least 92 points. Reaching such heights does not come easily.
The improvement in the structure of the team may show why Konaté is making more clearances with his head, it does not fully explain the improvement in his overall performance. There is another metric which makes that far clearer.
Konaté made an average of 92.7 touches per 90 minutes last season, a rise of around 16 on either of his first two years in England. It has rescinded to 83.5 under Slot, though the point of interest relates to their location.
Just 5.3 per cent of Konaté’s touches were in the Liverpool box in his final campaign with Klopp, but the rate has more than doubled to 12.3 this term. While his average positions remain largely similar, a heatmap comparison is more instructive. You can see (on the right) that the former Leipzig man has been most heavily involved in the half space between the Reds’ penalty area and the half way line. Last term (left), his peak area for touches bled over a far greater area.
Four of the five tackles he has made this season have been along the right touchline, showing that he still has to cover for Trent Alexander-Arnold at times, though not as often. Ball recoveries are another good indicator of this, with almost all of Konaté’s in 2024/25 occurring within the width of the penalty area, no longer with a high concentration on the flank to his right.
Ibou is being asked to cover less ground, which enables him to focus his defending in a far more concentrated area. Whether this has helped him to stay fit is up for debate, but it seems to have helped him perform to his best. It could very much be a case of win-win for Slot.