Phil Thompson: Liverpool should get Upamecano despite Man Utd shocker

I’d describe Liverpool’s start to the season as alright. This is going to be a strange season, it was always going to be, given the pandemic, the Premier League season will be unpredictable.

Will Everton do a Leicester? Could Aston Villa do well? We’re going to have total craziness until around February and March, I reckon. What it could mean is a very interesting season, but ultimately, the quality is going to suffer as a result.

So, I can see why Liverpool’s chances look like they’re wavering because they won’t go as many games unbeaten as they did last season, they won’t play like they did last year. Last weekend’s results worried me, for example.

The quality was just absolutely dreadful and we’re only in October! It’s not a coincidence that we’re seeing such a large amount of goals. Now, you’re seeing Liverpool, Man City, and others getting a lot of injuries, and players are having to develop themselves as better defenders and midfielders.

I’ve seen Dayot Upamecano’s been linked with Liverpool as well as Man United now, and of course, after their result against United in the week, you’d be wondering whether it’s the right call. Though on saying that, you could say the same thing about Virgil van Dijk if you had only ever seen him play in that game against Aston Villa.

You have your off days – everyone does.

RB Leipzig have had a fantastic start to their season, they didn’t look like that in the second half at Old Trafford, United were all over them and won 5-0. Upamecano was all over the place, but so was the entire team.

But don’t be fooled. He’s a very good defender, and there’ll be a lot of people looking at him because he is making a lot of waves. There’s not a lot of quality centre-backs available in Europe at the moment, and I know Rio Ferdinand wasn’t happy with his performance but I think I remember Rio having one or two bad games himself!

One or two shockers, it happens to everybody. He’s had a couple of shockers as a pundit, too, we’ve all seen the ‘give it to Ole’ rant a million times!

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