Conor Bradley is actually less of a gamble for Liverpool now than Trent was 7 years ago – opinion
It was just before 1:30pm on Tuesday afternoon when the instant reaction among many Liverpool supporters may have been utter panic.
When news filtered through that Trent Alexander-Arnold will be ruled out for several weeks due to a knee injury, Reds fans must’ve felt like banging their heads against the nearest wall. Bad enough that our influential vice-captain would be sidelined; even worse that it’s happened on top of our other two senior full-backs also being unavailable.
The obvious solution of putting Joe Gomez at right-back is tempered by him being needed to cover on the opposite flank while Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas continue their respective recoveries, while the ever-versatile Swiss army knife that is James Milner is no longer at Anfield.
Therefore, a huge opportunity appears to have presented itself for Conor Bradley – and the irony is that the man he’s replacing (temporarily for now) got his big break in similar circumstances, and was actually an even bigger gamble at the time than the Northern Ireland defender is now.
Throwback to Trent’s Liverpool breakthrough
The final three months of 2016 brought plenty of joy to the Alexander-Arnold household, with Trent making his senior Reds debut and his Premier League bow in that time, along with signing a long-term contract.
2017 began with him being selected to start in an FA Cup third round tie against Plymouth Argyle, his fourth appearance for Jurgen Klopp’s side. His fifth would raise plenty of eyebrows among Liverpool supporters.
On 15 January of that year, injury to Nathaniel Clyne forced the Reds manager into giving an 18-year-old right-back his first Premier League start…against Manchester United at Old Trafford.
He’d be given the task of curtailing Anthony Martial, who at the time was a far more fearsome proposition than he is now. The Frenchman had scored in this very fixture the previous season, sparking an excessively hyperbolic reaction from Martin Tyler on Sky Sports.
Trent did a stellar job that day in a 1-1 draw, so much so that he was handed seven more appearances by Klopp before the end of the season. A mere 16 months after that game against the Red Devils, he was starting in a Champions League final.
He’s now just two matches away from reaching 300 for Liverpool. It’s safe to say that he’s never looked back from the surprise nature of his first Premier League start just under seven years ago.
Bradley is better placed now than Trent was in 2017
Let’s remind ourselves of where Trent was at in his career when he was given that fateful start at Old Trafford. He’d played just four senior games, had only turned 18 three months previously and his international experience was no higher than seven caps for England at under-19 level.
Compare that to where Bradley is now (prior to the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg against Fulham on 10 January). The 20-year-old has already played nine times for Liverpool’s first team, on top of 53 games for Bolton during a hugely successful loan last season, and has been capped 13 times at senior level by Northern Ireland (Transfermarkt).
Older and with far more experience than Trent at the time of his Anfield breakthrough, there’s a strong case to be made that the youngster from Castlederg in County Tyrone represents less of a gamble now than his senior right-back colleague did in January 2017.
The one caveat to the Irishman’s CV is that it’s yet to contain a Premier League appearance – Liverpool’s current vice-captain had a very brief top-flight cameo against Middlesbrough a month before being thrown in at the deep end at Old Trafford.
However, by and large Bradley is better equipped now for a sustained run in the Reds’ first team than his teammate in the number 66 shirt had been seven years ago.
Have faith in Bradley
We’re not asking the Northern Ireland right-back to instantly be the second coming of Trent, but simply to show enough over the coming weeks that, whenever the vice-captain is next unavailable, fans would have no qualms about the 20-year-old stepping into the breach.
Indeed, should Bradley turn out to be an unqualified success, Klopp might even be tempted to persevere with him at right-back and copper-fasten one of football’s worst-kept secrets in finalising the transition of the England international to a fully fledged midfielder.
The Tyrone native did a stellar job when brought on for the final 15 minutes of the FA Cup win over Arsenal on Sunday, entering the fray with the score at 0-0 and impressing to such a degree that Alan Shearer labelled his performance ‘superb‘.
The challenge for him now is to extrapolate that standard across a series of matches as a starter for Liverpool in the Premier League. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Bradley is capable of doing just that, even though Trent’s qualities in possession will undoubtedly be a huge miss for Klopp’s side.
#Ep98 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones
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