Should Agger and Toure start the Season as 1st choice Centre Halves?

Recently I've been asked to submit a weekly post to www.tomkinstimes.com weekly symposium. The format is that a question is sent out once a week to symposium members who each submit their response to be published on the website created and run by renowned author, blogger and liverpoolfc.tv columnist Paul Tomkins. I will post my symposium posts on The Red Article one day after they appear on The Tomkins Times, this is because TTT is a subscription only website so I need to ensure they have exclusivity on what I provide in the first place.

If you enjoy this you should check out www.tomkinstimes.com it is a fantastic website which boasts an excellent selection of members who participate in some excellent well rounded discussions on all things LFC. Plenty of the content on there is available for free so you can see if you like it before considering getting a subscription.

Anyway, this week's question was:

Should Agger and Toure start the season as 1st choice Centre Halves?

Although Kolo has been signed as a direct replacement for the retiring Jamie Carragher, I don’t think this should mean that he automatically fills the starting position Carragher held for the second half of last season.

In my eyes he has been bought as an option and should therefore need to earn a starting berth in the same way any of our defenders should. It seems that there is little doubt Agger will start the season as the first choice so the real question is who will partner him. As things stand we have three experienced options for centre-back. Skrtel undoubtedly had a poor season last time out but it seems statistically he matched up to both Agger and Toure for the most part, outperforming them both in relation to Aerial Duel win % but obviously trailing behind them both by some margin with regard to defensive errors.

While I’m afraid it would be futile to make the case for Skrtel’s inclusion given that he is very likely to be sold this summer I can’t help but express my frustration that we may be giving up on him a little bit prematurely. If there is one out, there will surely be one in, and given Toure’s already joined I am interested to see what type of defender will be sought.

One thing it seems we may be missing in a Toure – Agger partnership is a dominating aerial presence – according to EPL index Agger won 61% of aerial 50-50s last season while Toure falls behind by some margin with only a 40% success rate, I think this is an attribute which is important to have in our first choice partnership. We already have a few young players who may vie to become the back-up option at centre-back in Martin Kelly and Andre Wisdom. Both have gained some experience at full-back but it seems both will be aiming to move to the centre and although they may have to wait for the opportunity they can be considered as cover at least for the season ahead.

It remains to be seen who we will add to the squad before the season begins and I think that we need to consider the quality of any new addition before we decide on what our strongest pairing is. I think Agger and Toure are definitely a capable partnership but that doesn’t mean they should be automatic first choice and I still think we can improve in this area.

Link to original Piece: HERE

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