In a recent interview with Patrick Davison, Arne Slot spoke about how helpful Virgil van Dijk is to the buildup phase. He described the captain as being the best at the club at “playing between the lines.” The manager consistently speaks about exerting control over the game, and a key component of his tactical plan relates to how the central defenders can use their passing to maintain central progression in order to break the opposition press.

For this reason, we will suggest a player who has great progressive pass data. There are times when the opposition deploys a narrow press to make it more difficult for Liverpool to progress the ball centrally and so, as seen often with Van Dijk, the central defenders must also possess a good passing range.

Unfortunately, Virgil will not be a Liverpool player forever, and so when recruiting for a potential replacement this summer, the club must prioritize players who can play as the left-sided central defender and who won’t expect to start every game. Van Dijk may, in fact, only have a few more seasons at the club, with his contract extension still only keeping him at Anfield for another two seasons, and so we will need to suggest a player who is young and has the potential to develop under Van Dijk in relatively limited game time.

We will also expect this player to be physically imposing, as with Liverpool’s current first-choice pairing. Of course, Dean Huijsen would currently seem to be Liverpool’s preference in this position; however, we have already covered him in a separate data dive which you can read HERE.

Just like Van Dijk, we will not demand for this player to be left-footed. As long as the player is reasonably comfortable using his left foot and has played on the left side of defence before, they would still meet the requirement.

As we are attempting to recruit a player with high potential who will likely fulfil a squad player role, we will not expect him to have played in one of Europe’s top five leagues. As long as this player has performed to a standard which would indicate that they would not be out of their depth in the Premier League, we will forego top league experience in favour of huge potential.

Liverpool have also displayed a clear willingness to spend big on a centre-back this summer, as it has been confirmed in numerous reports that Liverpool would meet Dean Huijsen’s £50 million release clause, so we will work under the assumption that our budget in this position is roughly £50 million.

Lastly, in the previous piece covering player departures, we suggested that Liverpool may keep hold of Wataru Endo and Stefan Bajcetic heading into next season; however, it would be beneficial if the club could recruit a player who can cover at defensive midfield also.