Sign up to FREE email alerts from Liverpool.com - The best LFC opinion Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

There are things in life which are guaranteed. Death, taxes, and most notably, Dejan Lovren getting injured when you really could do without him doing so.

With a tendency to suffer from the sniffles and minor niggles, knocks have disrupted the rhythm of his Liverpool career since his signing in 2014 from Southampton, and the Croatian centre-back boasts a lack of reliability that would put Mickey Mantle to shame.

One of Lovren’s trademark injuries came when the Reds travelled to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup third round this January. With the game in its infancy, the defender pulled up with a hamstring strain and signalled it was something that he could not continue to play on with.

Television cameras cut back and forth to the Liverpool dugout, where the management team where frantically readying a young substitute many fans had never heard of, let alone seen play. At the age of 16, Ki-Jana Hoever became the club’s youngest ever FA Cup player, and third youngest player of all time.

(Image: (AP Photo/Rui Vieira))

More importantly, he came on to play centre-back against one of the most impressive sides outside the Premier League’s top six. Wolves had established themselves as a hugely problematic and vigorous outfit and were at close to full-strength for this tie. Liverpool, on the back of a hectic Christmas schedule and in the midst of a title race being competed at an unrelenting pace, opted to rest several key players for the tie, including goalkeeper Alisson Becker and the hugely influential Virgil van Dijk.

That meant Hoever was thrust into a makeshift defensive unit including midfielder Fabinho, the inexperienced self-declared winger Rafael Camacho and second-choice keeper Simon Mignolet. Despite the lack of cohesion around him, which at one point led to a near costly moment of uncertainty due to a chronic lack of communication from Mignolet, the Dutch youngster emerged from the 2-1 defeat as one of the very few positives.

Klopp had not intended to expose Hoever as much as he did that night, and subsequently reverted the youngster’s development back to the youth team and away from the limelight for the remainder of the campaign.

This pre-season has seen the return of Hoever at right-back in the friendlies against both Tranmere Rovers and Bradford City. Like his team-mate Rhian Brewster, Hoever has generated big excitement with his maturity both physically and mentally in the brief glimpses witnessed to date.

Hoever looks bigger, fitter and more considered, with obvious consideration given to the level of both the opposition. Moving him to full-back in pre-season may well be more meaningful than simply give him a summer’s run out.

With talk rife throughout the summer that Liverpool require a full-back who can potentially cover both sides following the sheer volume of appearances clocked up by Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson as well as the departure of Alberto Moreno, Klopp will undoubtedly looking hard at how Hoever responds to the gauntlet thrown down to him.

(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images))

He could follow a similar path at Liverpool to Joe Gomez, who arrived at Anfield as an 18-year-old and was immediately given first-team action at full-back until a serious injury struck while playing for England U-23s in the October of his debut season.

Liverpool were of the opinion they had pulled-off a real coup when they secured the signature of Hoever from AFC Ajax’s academy in August 2018, seeing off competition from league rivals Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea. The player will have undoubtedly benefited from training with the first-team and absorbing the daily standards set by European champions, and his progression may well convince the manager to implement a path to first-team football for the forthcoming season.

With Alexander-Arnold pivotal to Liverpool’s overall style of play in both attacking and defensive transitions, it may be that Klopp is able to utilise Hoever throughout the season at full-back without any risk of over-exposure. This will also be aided by Gomez’s ability to deputise in those positions also, should he remain injury-free.

Alexander-Arnold totalled 3,388 minutes across 2018/19 over the course of 40 games. He is now seen as an indispensable cog in the Liverpool machine. It is therefore easily forgotten that there is a meagre three years difference in age between him and Hoever.

Ki-Jana Hoever would be wise to keep the trajectory of both Gomez and Alexander-Arnold in mind as he prepares for a full season as a Liverpool first-team player.

For Hoever, 2019/20 could be a season where opportunities, even at this early stage in his career, lead to something far beyond simply deputising unexpectedly on a winter’s evening in Wolverhampton.