Liverpool’s Right-Back Gamble: A Strategic Misread

Liverpool walked out of the summer window looking organised, logical, even efficient. Two defenders in, a reshaped squad, a clear plan on paper.

Then the season started, and the right side of defence started flashing red.

Jeremy Jacquet arrived from Rennes. Ronald Araujo came in on loan from Barcelona. Useful players, versatile, modern defenders. But neither is a specialist right-back, and in a system that leans so heavily on that position, the gap now looks less like a detail and more like a strategic misread.

Calvin Ramsay was sent out on loan. Conor Bradley suffered a serious knee injury. Strip it all back and Liverpool, a club that talks openly about challenging for the biggest prizes, have only one senior natural right-back: Jeremie Frimpong.

For a team with this ceiling, that is a remarkable tightrope to walk.

Carragher Calls It Out

Jamie Carragher did not bother dressing it up. On Stick to Football, he went straight to the point.

"Conor Bradley got his chance and got a bad injury," he said. "My problem with it is, he's a good young player who's done really well, but if someone gets a bad injury, he's not that good that you don't replace him.

"You'd wait for Trent to come back and you'd wait for Andy Robertson to come back. Unfortunately I don't think we should be waiting for Conor Bradley to come back. You go and buy a right-back because Frimpong isn't one.

"When Conor Bradley comes back, he's then got to fight for his place and I think that's fair; but this thing of 'we've got to wait for Conor Bradley to come back' – no. We're Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in the world.

"You can't wait for Conor Bradley. We've got to get him back and good luck to him, but they've made a massive mistake."

Strip away the emotion and the core argument stands up. Bradley is talented, energetic and gave Liverpool’s right flank a different kind of bite when he broke through. But hinging an entire season’s depth chart on the recovery of a young full-back from a serious injury was always a roll of the dice.

Frimpong Under the Spotlight

Bradley’s injury doesn’t just remove a body. It removes timing, rhythm and certainty. A return date on a medical report is not the same as a player being truly ready. After a long lay-off, sharpness, confidence and decision-making take time to return. Liverpool cannot realistically expect Bradley to step straight back in and hit peak levels from day one.

That reality shoves Frimpong into the glare.

He offers pace, direct running and attacking thrust. He can stretch a game and hurt teams going forward. But the doubts are growing on the other side of the ball. Recent performances have not fully convinced defensively, and in this Liverpool setup the right-back is not a luxury winger starting from deep. He has to hold width, recover 40 yards in a heartbeat and live on a knife-edge of positional discipline.

The margin for error is small. The workload is huge.

There is another layer of risk. Frimpong’s own fitness record last season was not spotless. So the entire structure leans on a player who has both something to prove and something to manage physically. One setback, one muscle pull at the wrong time, and Liverpool are back in the world of makeshift answers: midfielders dragged out of their best roles, centre-backs shuffled wide, systems bent to cover a hole that should have been filled in August.

They tried versions of that in 2025/26. It did not solve much.

A Window That Missed the Obvious

This is where the frustration bites hardest. Liverpool did act in defence. They did not ignore the back line. But they strengthened around the problem rather than through it.

Araujo can cover multiple positions, and that flexibility has value across a long campaign. It is not the same as signing a specialist to live in that right-back channel, week after week, against Premier League wingers and Champions League transitions.

The club has long prided itself on smart recruitment, on being a step ahead of obvious issues. Here, the most glaring vulnerability on the team sheet stayed unresolved. The numbers look fine on a squad list. The reality on the pitch feels very different.

Andoni Iraola now walks a tight path. He needs Frimpong not just available, but accelerating, learning the role’s demands at speed and staying on the pitch. He needs Bradley’s recovery to be smooth, then his adaptation to be quick, without leaning on that as a solution too soon.

Liverpool chose to gamble that they could ride this out. The early signs suggest this wasn’t a marginal risk, but a central one. If the right side of their defence keeps creaking, the question will not be about hindsight. It will be why a club of this size left itself so exposed in the first place.