‘Fantastic’… Jurgen Klopp says 24-year-old Liverpool player was excellent against Sheffield United

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Jurgen Klopp has praised the performance of Ibrahima Konate for Liverpool against Sheffield United.

After news of Joel Matip’s devastating injury blow, Konate’s role for the Reds has just gotten a whole lot more important.

He started that off with a mixed 90-minute showing at Bramall Lane last night. Although he didn’t always look convincing, Konate came out of the game with some impressive defensive statistics. And speaking in his post-game press conference, Klopp suggested that the 24-year-old had been targeted by United.

“On the other side, we defend their set-pieces really, really good and that’s the most important thing,” explained the Liverpool manager. “And then you have to go for the moments, games are decided in moments. You don’t need to have like 80 per cent possession to win a football game, 10 per cent [is] enough sometimes. You just have to do the right stuff.

“Obviously we had much more than 10 per cent but that gives you more chances to make mistakes and you could see Ibou played a fantastic game, I don’t know how many headers he had to do today – I was close to asking Chris [Wilder] if they could shoot the ball for once on the other side and then Virg can go in these challenges.

“And then obviously all of a sudden he felt the intensity, he gave two balls away and was a bit tricky in these moments. But you have to get through this and tonight we came through and we will try to do it again on Saturday.”

Konate has a busy night

In all honesty, we were really disappointed with last night’s display from Konate.

The France international obviously had a really busy time of it. As teams often do, Sheffield United did appear to target the side of the defence that didn’t contain Virgil van Dijk.

This meant that Ibou was asked a number of questions by Wilder’s attacking options. Although he battled hard and often came out on top, Konate never really looked comfortable.

His use of the ball was regularly wayward, and he ran down a couple of blind alleys when moving forward in possession.

Having become used to Matip’s silky runs again of late, Konate just doesn’t have that same authority when bringing the ball out of defence.

More than once the £35m man almost put his team in trouble by being slack in possession.

Unfortunately, this has been a feature of Ibou’s game ever since the early days of this season. Having started the campaign so well, the former RB Leipzig man has dropped off a fair bit, and was rightfully replaced by Matip.

With his older colleague now likely out for the rest of the season, Konate is going to have to find his feet again. In many ways, last night was a good settler for that. It was far from perfect, but as Jurgen says, Ibou got through it with a clean sheet intact. Much better will be needed against stronger opposition, though.