Value Adder: Why Liverpool refuse to quit on Jarrad Branthwaite

Value Adder: Why Liverpool refuse to quit on Jarrad Branthwaite Liverpool are refusing to give up on a pursuit of Jarrad Branthwaite. Here's what our Value Adder data model tells us. Liverpool are in need of a centre-back and one name that simply refuses to go away is Jarrad Branthwaite. Even if that name probably should drop off their shortlist, if we’re entirely honest. The centre-back had a difficult season last year, playing just 680 Premier League minutes, but that’s really the least of Liverpool’s concerns. Ultimately, he’s a player they almost certainly cannot sign - Everton won’t let it happen. The Reds haven’t tried to sign someone from Everton for years now, with their last serious attempt being Romelu Lukaku in 2015. That ended as you’d expect - a firm ‘no’, to put it in nicer terms, and that was that. No negotiation, in other words. So why are they actually, per Football Insider , willing to persist with the idea of Branthwaite? We’ve had a look at our Value Adder model to make sense of it. Value Adder: Jarrad Branthwaite Branthwaite is an interesting player. He also carries that precious homegrown status and has several Premier League seasons under his belt. Immediately, he eliminates many of the concerns that clubs have when signing a centre-back. The issue is that his best season happened a few years ago now. It came under Sean Dyche in 2023/24 and Branthwaite has failed to match it since - though, injuries are partly to blame for that. But that’s the campaign that will drive interest in Branthwaite. A feeling among clubs that here’s a player who is undervalued based on his current form if you can get him back to that top level. Our Value Adder model has Branthwaite ranked as the no.6 most valuable centre-back in the Premier League for 2023/24. That dropped to 17th for 2024/25, as both his per-90 and per-action value fell. That, though, was largely because his on-ball influence fell off a cliff while he provided 0 goals compared to 3 in his best season. Branthwaite’s defensive numbers remained solid and we had him down as roughly the same value per-90 defensively for all of 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26. That does suggest that Branthwaite is still the same player as he was in 2023/24 - it’s a shift in Everton that perhaps doesn’t allow for him to play much of a role that sees his overall value fall. The player was never a massive passer but he dropped into an outlier for passes in 2024/25, sitting over one standard deviation below average for attempted, successful and key passes per 90. In fact, his weighted attacking actions are all the way down in the 13th percentile for centre-backs. This wasn’t the case the year before, with Branthwaite showing a much brighter all-around game. The defensive value is there and if Liverpool or Manchester United can get a hold of him, they’ll believe they can turn him back around to delivering some attacking value, too.