Liverpool's Full-Back Dilemma: Is Djed Spence the Solution?
Liverpool’s summer has been framed by one big question: who comes after Mohamed Salah? Quietly, another issue has been growing louder. Full-backs. Both sides of the pitch. Both in need of help.
And that’s where Djed Spence suddenly steps into the conversation.
A World Cup that changed the picture
Six weeks ago, the idea of Spence in a Liverpool shirt would have been dismissed out of hand. Lewis Steele of the Daily Mail admitted as much on Anfield Index’s Media Matters show. He simply didn’t rate the Tottenham defender highly enough to see him as a realistic option.
Then came the World Cup.
Spence has been one of England’s standout performers in North America, and his display against Argentina in the semi-final forced a lot of people to look again. Steele went as far as to call him England’s best player on the night. That sort of performance, in that sort of game, tends to reshape reputations very quickly.
It also reframes recruitment conversations. Not because Liverpool are definitively in for him – Steele was clear he has heard nothing concrete on that front – but because Spence suddenly looks like the answer to a very obvious question in Andoni Iraola’s squad.
A profile that fits Anfield’s problem
Liverpool’s need at full-back is not subtle. On the left, Milos Kerkez is the emerging option, but he needs real competition. Kostas Tsimikas is back from Roma and will be assessed in pre-season, yet his long-term status under Iraola is far from guaranteed.
On the right, there is also a sense of being one player short. Depth, versatility, and the ability to play Iraola’s aggressive, front-foot football from wide defensive areas are all on the shopping list.
Spence ticks those boxes. He can operate on both flanks, a trait Steele highlighted as a major reason the move would make football sense. In a squad that could lose Salah and is already juggling transitions across the back line, a two-sided full-back is gold dust.
“It does make a lot of sense,” Steele said, outlining the logic rather than reporting a live negotiation. “He can play on the right and the left, which is exactly what Liverpool need. I think they’re a left back short. I think they’re a right back short.”
That’s the heart of it. Even without a whisper of concrete talks, the fit is obvious.
Interest, logic… but no evidence of a move
The complication is simple: logic is not the same as reality.
Steele was careful to separate his analysis from the transfer noise. He repeated that he has “not heard anything really to suggest that Liverpool are going to make a move for him.” No briefings, no late-night calls, no quiet confirmations. Just a player whose profile now looks tailor-made for a squad that needs exactly his type.
The pressure point is Spence’s form. Performances like the one against Argentina change how clubs talk in recruitment meetings. They force names higher up lists. They prompt second and third looks.
“It would make an awful lot of sense if they were to step it up,” Steele admitted, before immediately undercutting that with the reality: “I haven’t had anything to suggest they will just yet.”
So the idea of Spence to Liverpool sits in that grey area – not fantasy, not fact. Just a move that, on paper, fits.
Spurs’ stance and the price of potential
Tottenham, for their part, appear ready to cash in. TEAMtalk’s Graeme Bailey reported on July 14 that Spurs are prepared to green-light Spence’s sale, with Liverpool and Newcastle among the clubs in the conversation, while Inter Milan are seen as favourites at this stage.
The fee being discussed is significant. Spurs are understood to want between £30–40 million, a figure boosted by his World Cup displays for England. That number places him firmly in the bracket of a serious investment, not a cheap depth option.
For Liverpool, that raises the key question: do you spend that level of money on a player who, at least initially, might be covering Kerkez on the left and Jeremie Frimpong on the right?
It’s the kind of strategic call that defines a window. Commit heavily to a versatile full-back now, or hold fire and trust what you already have while addressing other areas first.
A window of moving parts
Spence is only one piece of a wider puzzle at Anfield. While the full-back situation simmers, Liverpool are also pushing on other fronts.
Steele has outlined how the pursuit of Bradley Barcola is building towards what he believes could become the “story of the summer” for the club, with multiple sources feeding into that saga. That chase, and the ongoing need to navigate Salah’s eventual succession, inevitably influences how aggressively Liverpool move on secondary targets.
One thing seems clear: there will be no swap traffic with Spurs involving Cody Gakpo. Any notion of that kind of deal has been firmly put to bed after the latest update on the Dutchman’s future. Gakpo is not part of this equation.
So Spence stands alone as a possibility: a Tottenham full-back whose World Cup has forced a rethink, whose versatility matches Liverpool’s needs, whose price reflects both risk and upside.
The logic is there. The opportunity is there. The question now is whether Liverpool turn a smart theoretical fit into a real bid before the window closes on September 1.
