Nicklas Bendtner has taken aim at one Liverpool player who he accused of being ‘so slow on the ball’ and believes that the Reds would find an upgrade from within the Premier League.
The former Arsenal striker was speaking on the Stolpe Ind podcast when he gave a withering assessment of Ibrahima Konate, with the ex-Denmark international citing his compatriot Joachim Anderson of Crystal Palace as a superior centre-back.
The 36-year-old said of the Eagles defender: “Now, I like to make [a proposal] where we put him in Liverpool’s team instead of Konate. [Konate] is so slow on the ball and has no idea where to play it. There, you can argue for what he is doing there versus the fact that Joachim could play there.”
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Andersen – who’s lost just once in his four visits to Anfield with Fulham and Palace – was superb for the Eagles in their win away to Liverpool last Sunday, making a whopping 13 clearances for Oliver Glasner’s side (Sofascore).
It comes as no surprise that he ranks among the top 8% of centre-backs in Europe’s five main leagues for that particular metric over the past year, averaging 5.3 per game (FBref).
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Although the Denmark defender is someone we’d certainly welcome if he were to be linked with the Reds, we don’t go along with Bendtner’s criticism of Konate’s use of the ball.
The 24-year-old has the joint-fourth best passing success rate of anyone to start a Premier League match for Liverpool this season (WhoScored), while he’s among the 91st percentile of positional peers in Europe for progressive passes per 90 minutes with 5.54 (FBref).
In a post-Virgil van Dijk world at Anfield, we wouldn’t argue against a possible Andersen-Konate partnership at the back for LFC, but we wouldn’t be tossing the Frenchman out the door just to make way for the Palace defender, despite what Bendtner might say.