Liverpool will await a full medical update after Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 was withdrawn early in the second half of Saturday\u2019s defeat to Chelsea with a worrying quad issue. The 26-year-old limped off after 56 minutes while the Reds were trailing and in need of a goal, prompting manager Arne Slot to make a tactical change rather than a like-for-like swap.<\/p>\n
Slot introduced a midfield substitution for defensive cover, taking off Curtis Jones as Ryan Gravenberch completed the match at the back in a deep-lying playmaker role. The decision came as Konat\u00e9 struggled to use the ball and showed signs of a muscular problem.<\/p>\n
Slot explained the immediate withdrawal was precautionary: “I don\u2019t know if it is a big injury, but what I do know is he limped a little bit and when I asked him he said he felt his quad a little bit. Then, for me, all alarm bells go off because in another sprint you never know if that is going to go good,” the Liverpool boss explained.<\/p>\n
“It was also already a substitution I had in mind, maybe for a few minutes or a little bit later, because the right centre back had a lot of ball possession and we needed to create from that position. We all know Ryan is quite good in that. It might be okay that he went off early enough but it was clear I had to take him off because he was limping.”<\/p>\n
The squad\u2019s defensive options are limited after the summer sale of Jarell Quansah and the loss of summer signing Giovanni Leoni to long-term injury last month. That leaves Joe Gomez as the only recognised centre back available to partner Virgil van Dijk if Konat\u00e9 is sidelined.<\/p>\n
The October international break offers time for assessment, but it also means Liverpool have no senior middle-defence cover should Konat\u00e9 be ruled out for more than 10 days. Konat\u00e9\u2019s current five-year contract, signed when he joined from RB Leipzig for \u00a336 million ($48.5 million), runs until coming June and no fresh deal has been agreed. If he leaves at the end of his contract he could become a free agent, with Real Marid and Paris Saint-Germain most prominently linked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Konat\u00e9 was withdrawn at 56 minutes with a quad concern, leaving Liverpool thin at centre back. short.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[299,1098,1100],"class_list":["post-3556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-arne-slot","tag-curtis-jones","tag-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}