{"id":518447,"date":"2026-01-15T17:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/518447\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T17:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:47:13","slug":"jarell-quansah-was-so-keen-to-leave-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/518447\/","title":{"rendered":"Jarell Quansah was ‘so keen to leave’ Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

One former Liverpool player was seemingly \u2018so keen to leave\u2019 the club last year before ultimately getting his wish.<\/p>\n

There was significant movement both into and out of Anfield in the summer transfer window, with a number of those who\u2019d helped the Reds to Premier League glory departing after Arne Slot\u2019s first season at the helm.<\/p>\n

One of those was Jarell Quansah, who made only four top-flight starts<\/a> under the Dutchman and joined Bayer Leverkusen in a \u00a335m deal at the start of July (Sky Sports<\/a>), and he\u2019s already played far more minutes this term than last (1,663<\/a> to 1,290<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"Jarell(Photo by Pau Barrena\/Getty Images)Quansah was \u2018so keen to leave\u2019 Liverpool<\/p>\n

While some may be questioning that decision now that Liverpool have been reduced to only three senior centre-backs, David Lynch stressed that the 22-year-old was itching to move on from Merseyside in search of more regular game-time elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The journalist told\u00a0Anfield Index<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cThe Quansah one, you know he\u2019s doing well out in Germany but I don\u2019t think anybody sat there kind of saying they\u2019re absolutely full of regrets that he went.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt really does it kind of gets ignored massively \u2013 he was so keen to leave you would not believe it. Worth noting that he\u2019s not a boyhood Liverpool fan; you could sense it at the back end of last season that he wanted to leave.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople think because he\u2019s a local lad \u2013 you know, he\u2019s only from Warrington and, you know, he\u2019d been at Liverpool for such a long time \u2013 that he would only possibly have wanted to leave because he\u2019d be forced out by a manager who doesn\u2019t like him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to leave because he wanted to play football and Liverpool could not offer him that or couldn\u2019t offer him enough football that would have satisfied him.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Jarell(Photo by Lars Baron\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Liverpool had to do what they thought was best<\/p>\n

Quansah had forced his way into Jurgen Klopp\u2019s starting XI towards the end of the German\u2019s reign, but having been unceremoniously substituted at half-time in Slot\u2019s first game in charge in August 2024, he never truly recovered his place in the team thereafter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to be wise in hindsight and say that Liverpool should\u2019ve done more to try and hold onto the centre-back, but if his desire to leave was as burning as Lynch suggests, then it was always going to be quite difficult to keep him at Anfield.<\/p>\n

Nobody was to know at the time that Giovanni Leoni would suffer a cruel ACL injury or that a deadline-day move for Marc Guehi would collapse so dramatically<\/a>, although there are lessons in all of that for the LFC hierarchy to take on board in the future.<\/p>\n

As reported by Lewis Steele, Liverpool did insert a buyback clause<\/a> into the deal which saw Quansah join Leverkusen, so that gives the Reds an element of control if they wish to bring the 22-year-old back to Merseyside at a later stage.<\/p>\n

Considering how this season has played out, Slot could certainly have done with having the England international in his squad, but last summer it would\u2019ve been difficult to turn down \u00a335m for a player who was seemingly desperate to move on to pastures new.<\/p>\n

Should he wish to return further down the line, the defender would be warmly welcomed back at Anfield.<\/p>\n

You can watch Slot\u2019s full post-Barnsley press conference below, via\u00a0Empire of the Kop<\/a>\u00a0on YouTube:<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One former Liverpool player was seemingly \u2018so keen to leave\u2019 the club last year before ultimately getting his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":518448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-518447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115900373004660428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}