The usual route is to be careful with young players like Rio. But sometimes, when you keep showing up and play yourself into contention, the best thing a coach can do is to allow him to express himself under careful guidance instead of holding him back.
Our great Captain Gerrard came on as an 18 year old and played a few games in the first season and then the following season onwards, the rest is history.
When you are good enough, you are old enough in football.
Roma’s directors will hold a meeting with Liverpool over a deal for Greece left-back Kostas Tsimikas with Marseille also interested in the 29-year-old. (Football Italia)
It is not as simple as numbers though. Lets look at the choices
Virgil
Konate
Gomez
Leoni
Virgil needs no commenting - absolute collossus
Konate - great at times, but prone to rashness and can be a bit injury prone. Also is entering his last 12 months under contract with PSG and Real Madrid both circling makes it look like he may be off in 12 months
Gomez - Versitile defender can play across the back 4 and at a push could even play DM if the need arises, also injury prone so not 1 you would want to count on to be a regular as he will likely end up unavailable due to injury.
Leoni - 18yo and not really a known entity, Slot and the coaches will see him daily so will know if he is ready to be given regular game time or will it be a case of managing his minutes for 12-18 months to see how he develops?
You mention Endo as an option but if we are at the point of Endo playng more than the final minutes of a game at CB then we have got things spectacularly wrong. Love seeing him come on to sure up our midfield, but if he is regularly playing CB we have a problem.
Personally I would rather see us focus our recruitment attention on Guehi or another top level CB than anywhere else on the pitch as whilst numbers wise we look ok, it is just a small scratch of the surface and you can see frailties within our defense.
Liverpool midfielder James McConnell has agreed a new five-year deal at Anfield and will join Ajax on loan for the 2025/26 season, according to David Ornstein.
It seems to me that Indy is not UK based. Look at the time stamp on that post. Even now, it is still not yet 6:52 AM in the UK on August 27th. It’s not just that post, I noticed with his/their posts of yesterday regarding Isak.