Liverpool Sell Jarell Quansah to Bayer Leverkusen | OneFootball

Arne Slot is not a manager afraid of player churn. In the season before he arrived at Anfield, the Dutchman oversaw a large number of player departures and arrivals and went on to post more points than in his title-winning campaign a year earlier. In some ways, therefore, we should not be surprised that there appear to be a large number of outgoings this summer, to match up with the incomings that we’re all enjoying celebrating.

Even so, it is said to see a player with Jarell Quansah’s potential leave the club, which has been confirmed as official this morning.

A Sort of Makeweight in the Wirtz Deal?

Pyaet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Swap deals are the kind of thing that people love to talk about, but which rarely happen in football. That is largely because of the complicated nature of accounting that major clubs need to be able to get involved in, with amortising players’ contracts over a certain length of time and moving figures from one column over to another. As a result, the move of Jarell Quansah to Bayer Leverkusen technically had nothing to do with the transfer of Florian Wirtz in the opposite direction. Yet it would also be folly to pretend that the conversation around the defender’s future will never have come up during negotiations.

The club has reportedly been an easy one to deal with, showing class throughout the transfer of both Wirtz and his teammate Jeremie Frimpong. It is easy to imagine a world where the German club asked Richard Hughes which of Liverpool’s players were available this summer, seeing names like Darwin Núñez, Harvey Elliott and Quansah bandied about. There may still be a move for Elliott at some point, but for now they have taken Quansah and left the Reds with some more work to do in the defensive department. That we have added a buy-back clause should be seen as a good thing.

The Defence is Now Weaker

For many supporters, adding more to Liverpool’s central defensive options has been a ‘must’ for some time. Quansah impressed when he came in during Jürgen Klopp’s last year, doing well enough in pre-season for Slot to start him ahead of Ibrahima Konaté in the first game of the season. He hooked him at half-time, however, and struggled to trust him much from that point onwards. His sale means that the central defence essentially consists of Virgil van Dijk, Konaté and Joe Gomez, the latter of whom has been a fitness concern for many years prior to now.

The fact that van Dijk is another year older and Konaté is reportedly reluctant to sign a new contract means that we have no real idea what we’re going to end up doing should either of them pick up an injury and Gomez be out again. There have been numerous links to Crystal Palace’s captain Marc Guehí, which is a move that will concern many when you consider his apparent homophobic stance over the rainbow armband in the past. Even if we do bring him in, there is still a feeling that we’ll be light at the back and that is something that will need to be addressed in the wake of Quansah’s departure.

A Good Move for Quansah

Whether supporters like it or not, the manager clearly didn’t rate Quansah enough to want to keep him around for another season. The fact that the Reds have managed to include a buyback clause means that there is at least the chance to bring him back in the future if he manages to fulfil his potential playing in the Bundesliga. Having been at Liverpool since the age of five, Quansah will now be facing a new challenge for the first time since he spent a brief period on loan at Bristol Rovers during the 2022-2023 campaign. It is fair to say that he’ll be operating at a different level with Leverkusen.

The hope from Liverpool’s point of view is that Quansah will grow and develop in Germany to the point that they can buy him back at some point in the future as more of a finished article. He was not one who could cope with the physical demands of life in the English top-flight, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t be able to once he’s grown and developed. It is easy to forget that he is still a relatively young player, so if he is one who learns his craft playing with Leverkusen, then that will only be a good thing for the Reds. If he doesn’t, we will have bagged a decent fee for someone the manager didn’t want anyway.