Liverpool’s three senior centre backs Virgil Van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip have all been mostly unavailable this season due to injuries which has forced Jurgen Klopp to deploy Fabinho and captain Jordan Henderson as centre-backs at different points.
On Tuesday night against RB Leipzig, Fabinho was deployed at the base of the midfield, in his favoured number six role and he gave an outstanding performance which gave him UEFA man of the match and he admits he missed playing there.
“Yes, I missed it a little bit playing the midfield position,” he told liverpool.com
“In general our quality was very good tonight, the communication from our two centre-halves, the pressing from the offensive players was working very good. Everyone was good, everyone enjoyed it, everyone pressed and we did the hard work.”
Liverpool signed two centre backs in January, Ozan Kabak and Ben Davies but hasn’t prevented Fabinho from being deployed in defence.
A repeat of the first leg’s scoreline and goalscorers in Budapest gave Liverpool a 4-0 aggregate win and progression to the quarter final. Their attention turns to the league where they’d hope to put behind past woes when they travel to Wolves on Monday.