Liverpool's summer departures: contrasting fortunes from Istanbul to Madrid
Six players left Anfield last summer — from Mohamed Salah's new life in Turkey to Ibrahima Konate's solid, if unspectacular, start at Real Madrid — and their early form says as much about structure and role as about individual quality.
Liverpool's summer rebuild was framed around who came in, but six players left the club, and their results elsewhere tell a story about how role, structure and opportunity shape a career far more than reputation alone, according to Planet Football.
Ibrahima Konate's move to Real Madrid on a free transfer has, so far, worked out better than Trent Alexander-Arnold's equivalent switch a year earlier. Konate is the first-choice centre-back, partnered with Dean Huijsen, and has passed 1,000 minutes this season under Jose Mourinho.
Konate's numbers flatter a shaky Madrid defence
Clean sheets measure how often a team keeps the opposition off the scoresheet across 90 minutes, and by that metric Madrid have been unconvincing: just four all season, one of which Konate watched from the bench. For a Mourinho side, historically built on defensive organisation, that is a modest return.
The context matters for how Konate should be judged. A centre-back's individual performance can be strong even when the collective defensive structure around him is leaking goals, and Planet Football notes he has been one of Madrid's better defenders despite the team's wider issues at the back.
Robertson's settling-in period mirrors Spurs' own
Andrew Robertson's move to Tottenham, after a January switch fell through, was supposed to stabilise a defence short on leadership. Instead his first outings as left-back came in a 3-0 defeat at Brentford and a 2-0 home loss to Newcastle, games in which Spurs' backline looked exposed in wide areas.
Since the international break, both player and team have turned a corner. Robertson provided an assist in a 3-1 win over Coventry and then started at Stamford Bridge as Spurs won there for the first time since 2018. The sequence suggests a left-back finding his rhythm alongside a backline that is settling into a clearer shape, though two matches is a small sample to draw firm conclusions from.
Salah's goal returns raise a question about league context
Mohamed Salah's switch to Trabzonspor was framed by club president Ertugrul Dogan as a romantic sell over a move to wealthier rivals or Saudi Arabia, a pitch he described to the BBC when Salah asked why he should choose the club. A reported £14.6m-a-year salary and 20 percent of shirt sales plainly helped too.
On the pitch, Salah has eight goals in ten Super Lig appearances, one behind the division's joint top scorers, plus two goals and two assists in three Conference League matches. His hat-trick against Galatasaray, in a league Planet Football describes as a step down from the Premier League, has to be read against that lower baseline of opposition quality even as it answers questions about his finishing.
Trabzonspor sit third, three points behind leaders Galatasaray, the only side to have beaten them this season — a result Salah's team delivered.
Integration, injury and the academy pathway
Curtis Jones was being phased into Cristian Chivu's Inter side gradually, starting three of his first six available matches, a pattern typical of a new signing adapting to an unfamiliar system before game time increases. That integration stalled when he suffered a myofascial strain in the adductor muscles of his right thigh after Inter's 2-2 draw with Roma in September, and he has not featured since.
Stefan Bajcetic's path illustrates how academy prospects who fail to force their way into a first team can be recycled through the loan system before a permanent exit. After loan spells at Red Bull Salzburg and Las Palmas, Liverpool sold him back to Celta Vigo, where he has been assigned to the club's reserve side in the Segunda and has played only 24 minutes this season following injury.
Harvey Elliott's situation follows a similar pattern of a player cut off from regular football. Frozen out at Aston Villa, he has started no games for Valencia and exceeded 30 minutes only twice. A double yellow card, with the second shown for arguing about the first, has not helped his standing, and AS reports that new coach Javier Aguirre does not rate him highly.
Taken together, the six departures show that a move away from Anfield resolves nothing by itself. Konate and Robertson have found defined roles inside settling structures, Salah has been handed the platform to dominate a lesser league, while Jones, Bajcetic and Elliott remain stuck in the same cycle of limited minutes and unresolved opportunity that defined their final seasons at Liverpool.