Early season Liverpool player power rankings

15. Loris Karius

Well, this hasn’t worked out very well, has it? The summer signing from Mainz that was supposed to cure Liverpool’s goal concession problems has already had to work through a preseason injury, as well as the pressure of being a young keeper on a title contending team.

Questions are rightfully being asked after only five Premier League matches for the German, and it may not be long until he relinquishes the starting role to former scapegoat Simon Mignolet. However, Karius is now coming off his best performance of the season in a 6-1 win against Watford. He made a few wonderful stops in the rout, but just missed out on the clean sheet.

It could be down to mostly luck, or it could be down to the defensive errors, but there is no doubt that Karius has not performed consistently at the level he needs to. A huge responsibility for the goalkeeper is to be aggressive and claim crosses. Set piece defending has been a weakness for Liverpool over the past few years, and they have signed a goalkeeper who has so far only exacerbated those problems.

Karius is still young, and this may be a skill that he will develop over the years. But for now, his save percentage is not good enough even if it won’t stay that low and the defense has conceded big chances.

Liverpool would do well to sign a goalkeeper in January, sell Mignolet, and keep Karius as a backup while looking towards next season as a chance for him to improve in (hopefully) the Champions League. Or this could all work itself out in the next few months, and Liverpool can run over the rest of the league like hey have been doing.