There’s a common consensus around Liverpool supporters at the moment that has circulated social media.
It goes: Every time, I watch Kerkez, I miss Tsimikas. Every time I watch Tsimikas, I miss Kerkez.
It’s a paradox that very succinctly summarises Liverpool’s left-back crisis at the moment. Kostas Tsimikas clearly isn’t quite good enough to wear the shirt anymore. Milos Kerkez has the benefit of being young, so he may yet come good enough, but isn’t quite the Andy Robertson heir we all expected him to be.
It means that Julian Ward is going to have to enter the market either in January or in the summer in order to find Liverpool a new left-back.
But just who could he go for?
What Iraola wants from his full-backs
It’s fair to say that at Bournemouth, Iraola wanted his full-backs to make a lot more attacking contributions from that position.
Alex Jimenez and Adrian Truffert are both very technical players who made constant overlapping runs but were also comfortable receiving deep and involving themselves in the build-up.
To get a better understanding of the similar profiles Liverpool could be targeting in the left-back role let’s take a look at Scoutlabs and who they viewed as statistically similar to Truffert and Jimenez.
The most similar players to Truffert according to Scoutlabs:
The most similar players to Jimenez according to Scoutlabs:
There are three interesting names from the above list. The first is Lewis Hall. He would undoubtedly be the dream option for Liverpool.
Getting him out of Newcastle will be extremely difficult, though. The other perhaps more realistic option might be Alejandro Balde, or perhaps Neco Williams, who would count as club-trained homegrown player.
It’s the aforementioned two and one more player we’ve decided to take a look at.
