Liverpool don’t often get things wrong in the transfer market.
Indeed, the Reds have become masters of sniffing out the right players at the right times over the years.
Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson, Alexis Mac Allister and Luis Diaz were all incredible signings for Liverpool.
However, the Reds have misfired in the transfer window on a few occasions.
Darwin Nunez has been criticised since signing for Liverpool, and now, Nunez is set to leave Anfield this summer.
Meanwhile, Federico Chiesa has been a bit of a flop this season.
However, perhaps one of the worst signings Liverpool have made in recent times was Naby Keita.
Keita joined Liverpool for £53m back in 2018, and he arrived with a lot of hype.
However, Keita was never amazing for Liverpool, much to the surprise of Ian Graham.
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Ian Graham has claimed that he thought Naby Keita would be a better signing than either Mo Salah or Virgil van Dijk, but, ultimately, things didn’t play out that way.
Naby Keita was supposed to be a star at Liverpool
Graham spoke about the signing of Keita.
The former Liverpool recruitment chief says he was Keita’s biggest fan at Anfield, claiming that he was actually more excited for this signing than he was for Mohamed Salah or Virgil van Dijk.
“I think the other one is Naby Keita,” Graham said.
“So I’ll hold my hands up. I was his biggest fan. I was, you know, people talk about the Mo signing and the Virgil signing as we have.
“I was way, way more excited about signing Naby Keita than either Mo or Virgil. Yeah, I’d never seen anything like him from a data point of view. I always look at the data first because that’s my speciality.
“I’d prefer a video analyst to look at the video because that’s their speciality. But I do watch players on video. So this guy looks so outstanding that it’s rare that I’ll sort of just see a player pop up in the data and then immediately start watching the video.
“And it’s like, scouts are going to love this player as well. A lot of the players that pop up in the data, they’ve got something. You know, Matip was a great player in the data, but he wasn’t the most elegant.”
“He’s not like a nice footballer to watch. Naby really was like super skilful, played as a destroying midfielder in Austria, stepped up to Bundesliga, played attacking midfielder in Bundesliga, still Leipzig’s best ever season. He played across two positions, stepped up Austria to Bundesliga, and every aspect of his game, winning the ball back, covering space, every pass was a through ball.
“I think I watched one of the pre-season games. He just sort of would put it on a plate for Sturridge every time. I was like, this guy’s brilliant.”
“I remember I kept on going on to Michael, my boss, Naby Keita, I had never seen anything like him. If you’re serious about data and football, he’s the player and yeah, we signed him. And when he played for us, he was really, really good.
“He was almost the level I expected him to be. And I expected him to be like top 10 in the world player, but he never played that many minutes for us.”
“Injury problems is number one, but I think one of the issues was he didn’t quite fit the team in a way. I don’t know if Jurgen realized before we signed him, so he played this defensive role, but then moved into more attacking role. I think naturally he’s more of a creator.”
Naby Keita’s injury history
Graham notes that Keita was supposed to be a fantastic player, but injuries got in his way.
Unfortunately, as Graham says, the midfielder just couldn’t stay fit during his time at Anfield.
Indeed, Keita suffered no fewer than 21 injuries during his time at Liverpool, and he missed a ton of games in the process.
| Naby Keita injury history for Liverpool | |
| Number of injuries | 21 |
| Games missed | 122 |
| Games played | 129 |
Keita’s fitness problems have plagued him even since leaving Liverpool, in his one season at Werder Bremen he picked up eight further injuries, and now, he’s on loan in Hungary with Ferencvaros at the age of just 30.
Keita didn’t quite become the player Graham expected him to be, that’s for sure.
