12 clubs in the Premier League conceded fewer goals than Liverpool last season. Liverpool finished fifth, on 60 points, with 53 goals against them and a defensive record that belonged in mid-table.
They also lost 12 games, and nobody who finished above them lost more than 11. Fifth place was built on 17 wins rather than on keeping people out. At the other end of the pitch there was little to fix. Liverpool scored 63 goals and failed to score in only four games all season.
All of which matters this month, because almost everybody they are currently missing plays in the same part of the team and the latest Premier League odds will showcase that fact.
Four defenders, one position
Liverpool's own injury page is the plainest account of it. Joe Gomez was forced off against Sunderland in Nashville and has a muscle injury. Conor Bradley is still recovering from surgery on the knee injury he suffered at Arsenal in January. Giovanni Leoni tore an anterior cruciate ligament on his debut. Jeremy Jacquet, who is 21, has yet to appear in pre-season after reporting discomfort in training.
The list is longer than those four names, and the rest of it is beside the point. Hugo Ekitike ruptured an Achilles tendon in April and plays as a forward. The club reports that Wataru Endo and Stefan Bajcetic have both stepped their training back up. Take out the forwards and the midfielders, and what is left of the absence list is a back four.
What Iraola has actually said
Andoni Iraola has been direct about it. Asked about Jacquet, who made his debut away to Newcastle, he explained why he was holding him back: "He comes from a lot of months without playing. And obviously I would like to try him with Virgil [van Dijk] when he recovers, because with the injury of Joe we've been without senior centre-backs."
Two days earlier, he had been blunter about Gomez: "I think it's going to be impossible to have him for the start of the season."
On 21 July, he had already put the returns in order, saying Leoni was the closest of the long-term absentees, with Bradley and Ekitike behind him and both still months away.
How the defence actually failed
Liverpool kept 10 clean sheets in 38 games and conceded two or more in 17 of them. Virgil van Dijk played all 38 league games in front of that record, which is the other half of the current problem: the defence was ordinary even with its most experienced defender playing every week.
The split underneath those totals is the part that matters on 23 August. Liverpool conceded 20 goals at home and 33 away. They lost three home games all season and nine away. Whatever was wrong with the defence, most of it went wrong somewhere other than Anfield.
The one closest to coming back
Leoni tore the ligament on 23 September 2025, almost 80 minutes into his debut, a League Cup tie against Southampton at Anfield, about a month after joining from Parma. He has 80 minutes of football for the club behind him, and a year of rehabilitation.
Talking to the club's website about his recovery, he sounded close without overstating it: "I'm not with the team, but I think in a short time now I can be back with the team."
Close is not the same as available. On the club's own account, Liverpool's centre-back position is currently being held together by a 19-year-old finishing a year out and a 21-year-old who has not trained fully.
Injury crisis to ease?
The centre of a defence is a season-long question rather than a matchday one, and the football odds at Betfair price a whole season rather than one afternoon. An August injury list changes a team sheet. A shortage at centre-back that runs into the autumn changes a table.