Slot on Jacquet Signing: “The Future of This Club Is in Very Good Place”
Liverpool’s new big money signing, 20-year-old French youth international centre half Jérémy Jacquet, won’t properly arrive at the club until the summer after the Reds agreed a £60M buy-and-loan-back January deadline day deal to sign the highly talented Rennes youngster.
When he does arrive, though, the expectation will be for Jacquet to compete for starting minutes from day one, particularly if Ibrahima Konaté moves on when his current contract expires. And head coach Arne Slot is feeling bullish about the signing who will arrive in six months.
“It’s very pleasing,” Slot said of beating Chelsea and Manchester United to the signing of Jacquet. “First of all, he is a very big talent—maybe even more than a talent, but we speak about talent because of his age. Second of all because we weren’t the only one interested in him.
“It’s a big compliment for the people working every day to sign players that we were able to sign such a big talent and another example of the model we are using—young, very talented players, sometimes in the start of their career, sometimes a few years into their career.
“But always players that are young and can improve us and help us for the short but definitely also for the long term. We have signed a lot of them recently and I’ve said many times that the mid- to long-term—but even the short-term—future of this club is in very good place.”
In the meantime, though, it does leave the Reds rather thin at the back, with the club in the midst of a defensive injury crisis and in the thick of a fight with Chelsea and Manchester United—the two sides they beat out to sign Jacquet—to finish in the Champions League places.
Currently sixth, the good news is that the Reds put in perhaps their most complete league performance of the season last weekend when they beat Newcastle 4-1. It’s also a near certainty that the Premier League will end up with five qualification slots rather than four.
Hopefully Slot will be proven correct that the short-term future of the club is just as bright as the longer term, with a very tough home date against Manchester City up next on Sunday before they face Sunderland on the road in a rare mid-week league tie next Wednesday.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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