Arne Slot looks on from the Anfield touchlineplaceholder image
Arne Slot looks on from the Anfield touchline | Getty Images
Liverpool have a lot of work to do in the summer transfer window - but a replacement for Mohamed Salah isn’t necessarily the top priority.
Whatever the end of the 2025/26 season brings for Liverpool – and there remains every chance that it contains silverware and a place in the Champions League despite recent disappointments – they have a busy summer ahead of them.
A decision has to be made on Arne Slot’s future, while the announcement that Mohamed Salah will leave Anfield over the summer leaves their transfer team with a substantial hole to fill. The search for a new winger will occupy many of the headlines when the next transfer window opens, but it may not be the most important move that the Reds make once the season has finished…
Why a new centre-back must be Liverpool’s first priority this summer
While Liverpool will be in sore need of a new wide forward (and perhaps a new midfielder given the underperformance in that department over recent months) nothing will trump their hunt for defensive reinforcements in terms of importance.
Given the aggressive nature of their wing-backs and the fact that Slot doesn’t operate with a true anchor man in midfield, the decline in output from the starting centre-backs, Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté, has been especially noticeable. Once so sturdy in the heart of defence, Liverpool’s pairing has become ragged and unreliable.
Van Dijk is starting to decline – more slowly than Salah, perhaps, but no less noticeably – and Konaté, whose standards have fallen substantially over the past year, seems set to leave on a free transfer when his contract expires at the end of June. Behind them, youngster Giovanni Leoni has missed the entirety of his debut season with a ruptured ACL and Joe Gomez’s future is uncertain. Liverpool need both quality and depth to build a team which can compete at the top of the Premier League table.
The likelihood is that Van Dijk remains a starter next season, with his veteran leadership still highly valuable, but with Konaté probably gone Liverpool urgently need a centre-back with the mobility to cover the Dutchman as he slows down, and the technical quality to help them build out from the back and link up with the midfield.
More than one signing will surely be needed unless Liverpool unexpectedly retain some of their current first-teamers, but a quick ball-playing centre-back will be crucial – fail to find one, or sign the wrong player, and they will struggle to remain strong enough in defence to be a force in the top flight after the summer.
The Crystal Palace star who could be precisely what Liverpool need
Given the sheer volume of rumours swirling around Anfield, it’s tricky to piece together precisely what Liverpool’s shortlist looks like, or to discern which stories have any real weight behind them – but one story caught our eye as making a particularly substantial amount of sense.
In the past week, both Liverpool and Chelsea have been linked with a bid for Crystal Palace’s Maxence Lacroix, a newly-minted France international who has quietly been among the most impressive centre-halves in the Premier League over the past year or so.
Lacroix ticks a lot of Liverpool’s boxes. He’s fast and has been clocked as the quickest defender in the top flight this season, an important attribute as Van Dijk gradually loses his burst of pace. He’s technically adept and comfortable passing the ball out of defence and handling an opposing press, also vital given that Liverpool’s centre-backs often have to get the ball away from their own box with limited support given the aggressive bent of their midfielders and full-backs.
The Frenchman wouldn’t come cheap, as Palace seldom allow their players to depart for low fees and have him under contract until 2029, but Liverpool need a defender of his profile rather badly. If they could also sign one of their cheaper targets – impending free agent Marcos Senesi, for instance – then it would surely be worth the outlay.
The alleged interest in Lacroix may, in the way of things, be paper talk and little more, but he provides a good example of the kind of centre-back Liverpool need, and at the age of 25 has plenty of good years to come without being so callow as to need a helping hand through his first season. If he proves to be a legitimate target, he would also be a very sensible one.
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