Of the five players who made up Liverpool’s injury-ravaged defense, two were midfielders, one was aged 19 with just 10 senior appearances to his name, and another was a flying full back who gives a good impersonation as a winger.
That a team with such a makeshift back line ended up coasting to a 3-0 win over Leicester in the English Premier League on Sunday perhaps spoke volumes of the fifth member of that defense, who — suddenly — has assumed a pivotal role in Liverpool’s immediate future.
Joel Matip is the last man standing at the heart of a defense that has been ripped apart by an unfortunate run of injuries that has seen Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez go down almost one week after another.