Replacing Ibou
Ibrahima Konaté is unlikely to stay at Liverpool. Who should the Reds sign to replace him?
This was drafted on Sunday before news broke that Liverpool have signed Jérémy Jacquet for next season. It’s still worth a read as the centre-back search isn’t over but bear in mind it was written without knowledge of the deal.
The transfer window has closed until the summer. Liverpool and Ibrahima Konaté remain some way apart over a new contract. The France international, 26, is in his fifth season at Anfield and believes he should be one of the best-paid defenders in the Premier League.
That’s according to a recent BBC transfer gossip round up, anyway. “And Liverpool could move to replace Konate with Tottenham defender Micky van de Ven, with Real Madrid also paying attention to the 24-year-old Netherlands defender's future,” it continued. How can you possibly argue with these stories when they’re provided by Teamtalk, oracle of all that is good and true?
As van de Ven is under contract for another three years at a club that doesn’t need to sell, we can dismiss the likelihood of him running out in red at Anfield next season. And maybe Konaté will sign a contract extension. It’s just hard to think of any peak-age player that has done this in the final months of their deal. Liverpool need a replacement.
A sizeable section of the Reds’ fanbase won’t be sorry to see the French international leave. Konaté has had a rough six months on a personal level, with some of his performances indicative of a player whose head was understandably not fully in the game. Whatever your view on he reasons behind his current level, Ibou is Liverpool’s most integral player in 2025/26 who is out of contract this summer.
Until recently we could look at FBRef to find a list of players with similar data as a starting point in our hunt for a Konaté replacement. Alas, we cannot swim in that pool anymore. Opta have five suggestions for us, though a slightly more historical comparison with Ibou has produced the best target of the lot. Let’s review the potential Konaté-a-like transfers before considering the diamond.
The five men on the Frenchman’s Opta Analyst page have a percentage given for their statistical similarity to the big man, listed below. We’ll also look at how they compare with Konaté on DataMB. Here’s how he rates over there on a few key metrics.
Francesco Acerbi, Inter, 83.64%
He turns 38 next week, closer to (my) middle age than Konaté’s. We can move on.
Berat Djimsiti, Atalanta, 78.74%
The idea of Liverpool signing a 32-year-old doesn’t feel any less fanciful than them going for Acerbi. That said, Djimsiti is out of contract this summer, so in a world in which the Reds need several centre-backs (e.g. this world), the idea of them acquiring a Ragnar Klavan-esque veteran doesn’t feel absurd. It’s impossible to know what Giovanni Leoni will deliver next season, after all.
The Atalanta man has twice kept a clean sheet in wins at Anfield. Arne Slot is deeply aware of one of them, as he mentioned recently.
Vitor Reis, Girona, 78.41%
A player for Manchester Ciudad won’t be joining the Reds any time soon. Reis is contracted to City until 2029, spending this season ‘on loan’ (at the Spanish branch of the firm) for 2025/26.
He has also only just turned 20, albeit he’s played over 1,800 minutes this season so is starting to amass decent experience. If we think he’s too young to be a realistic possibility to be the new Konaté next term (ahem, cough, Jacquet), we can probably dismiss…
Veljko Milosavljević, Bournemouth, 77.73%
This 18-year-old joined Bournemouth last summer. Even Richard Hughes’ tentacles at the Vitality probably couldn’t prise away a player with a contract until 2030, even if he wanted to sign this one.
On the plus side, he has the best ground duel win rate of any Cherries defender in the Premier League side. On the negative, his aerial success percentage of just 40.7 isn’t going to cut it. Or at least, it won’t yet. One to watch for the future.
Diego Carlos, Como, 77.50%
We finish our Opta round-up with our second 32-year-old. Carlos is at Como on loan from Fenerbahce, with whom he’s under contract for another two seasons.
It means we can again dismiss this option as unrealistic. As a former Aston Villa centre-back, he does at least have Premier League experience.
It’s fascinating that Konaté is matched with veterans, youngsters and a borderline retiree. Even allowing for the difficulty of assessing defenders with data, shouldn’t the 26-year-old be performing similarly to players in their prime?
If the assumption that Liverpool won’t sign any of these players is correct, the search must continue. We’ve found five players that Opta believe to be like Konaté, so which footballers are similar to those centre-backs? Leaving aside the five already covered cropping up again, their matches include:
Joachim Andersen, Ramon Hendriks, Robin Hranác, Moritz Jenz, Konstantinos Koulierakis, Gautier Lloris, Karol Mets, Tarik Muharemovic, Alessio Romagnoli, Anthony Roualt, Arouna Sangante and Rav van den Berg. Any of them take your fancy?
There were two further players who matched with two of our initial five Konaté hits: Aymeric Laporte and Nico Elvedi. The former City man has two years in age and one in contract on the Borussia Mönchengladbach defender. As Elvedi turns 30 in September, he’s likely too old already anyway.
We don’t have to give up our search. Opta also have a player radar comparison tool. However, it appears they no longer update it, as it matches players on their 2023/24 data. This isn’t ideal, as it increases the likelihood that the results for Konaté are for older players. One, a certain Joël Matip, doesn’t even play any more.
There is one exception. Brighton’s 25-year-old centre-back with only one year remaining on his current deal, Jan Paul van Hecke. Now we’re talking.
Look at how well the Dutchman advances the ball up the field. He is elite, particularly at progressive carries. Brighton’s possession average is over nine per cent below Liverpool’s, limiting van Hecke’s opportunities to move forward when compared with Konaté.
While it would be wrong to present with/without statistics for any player as absolute truth, Brighton have conceded 0.67 goals fewer per 90 minutes when van Hecke has featured in the Premier League over the last three seasons. Their goal difference improves by 0.78, so their attack has lifted in his presence too.
He’s also a known quantity to key members of the Liverpool squad. Virgil van Dijk is the player with whom van Hecke has spent most pitch time for the Netherlands, with Cody Gakpo fourth in those standings. Both have been on the pitch for at least part of all eight international matches in which the potential Konaté replacement featured.
Ryan Gravenberch and Jeremie Frimpong are further down the list, though the former also represented the Dutch under-21 side with the Brighton man. Van Hecke can get a character reference from multiple Liverpool players, is peak age, shouldn’t be too expensive and can help solve the Reds’ ball progression issues.
With those selling points, it might have to be considered a dereliction of Richard Hughes’ duty if he doesn’t try to sign him.
Postscript
There’ll be a detailed look at Jacquet in the next issue of the newsletter. For now, here’s his DataMB profile.
Timing is everything, eh?! Having put the work in on this, I wasn't going to abandon it and Liverpool will probably need another centre-back.
JPvH's aerial win rate in the Prem is 57.4% 😬 (I'm actually not a hater because he does a lot of other things well, but it just goes to show how thin the "senior" CB market is ... I had fun on BS the other day mumbling about the PL CB with the highest OBV this season being ... Senesi 🫣)