New market value confirmed 

©IMAGO

It took Ryan Gravenbech just 72 seconds to exert his dominance over Bologna’s midfield on Wednesday night, during his Liverpool team’s Champions League group stage clash. Facing his own goal deep within his own half, the Dutch midfielder received a pass from Virgil van Dijk under immense pressure from opposing midfielder Remo Freuler, but with a drop of the shoulder Gravenberch allowed the ball to run past him and his marker, before galloping up the pitch to play a quick one-two with Mohamed Salah and create the first serious chance of the match. Bologna couldn’t get near him and for much of the match the central midfielder pulled the strings as Liverpool picked up an important 2-0 win over a talented foe. 

The result now means that the Anfield club have won eight of their first nine games under the new manager and while those performances have been defined by goals from Salah or Luis Díaz, the real impetus behind Liverpool’s strong start to the season has come in midfield. There, Arne Slot has carried on the good work done by his predecessors, Jürgen Klopp, to keep Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister firing on all cylinders. But the Dutch tactician has perhaps gone one step further in his ability to finally find a role and position in this Liverpool team for Gravenberch, who now looks like a world-beater in the No.6 position for the Premier League side. 

From box-to-box wanderer to defensive midfield star

Despite only being 22 years of age, Gravenberch is already at his third major European club and to say his career has been far from consistent would be a bit of an understatement. After making the step up to the first team at Ajax in 2019, Gravenberch established himself as a talented box-to-box midfielder, before promptly making the move to Bayern Munich in 2023 for €18.5 million. However, despite making the move to Germany amidst much fanfare and hype, the Dutch talent found himself in a team that had long since settled on a midfield duo of Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka, leaving Gravenberch to be little more than a back-up to both players and very few opportunities to grow as a player. As such, just 12 months after making the move to the Bundesliga, the midfielder was then sold to Liverpool for a sizable sum of €40m. 

However, Gravenberch’s first season at Anfield was arguably just as frustrating as the one before it at the Allianz Arena. Although Klopp did use the Dutch midfielder in 26 Premier League games, just 14 of them were in starting positions in his team with Gravenberch often used as a box-to-box substitute to plug holes in the team. With an obvious talent for dribbling and picking out passes in the final third, the former Ajax academy player almost played like a No.10 at times. But there was little doubt that the player had gone from being a bench-warmer at one European giant to doing the exact same thing at another. And then, to Gravenberch’s great fortune, along came Slot. 

Perhaps the most notable thing that Slot has done with Gravenberch since arriving at Anfield is task the midfielder with playing in the No.6 position and essentially guard Liverpool’s defence, alongside getting up and down the pitch alongside Mac Allister and Szoboszlai. As the graph above shows, Gravenberch was no stranger to playing in the defensive midfield position at Ajax, where he played around 17% of his game for the Eredivisie giants. That then fell to 0% during his time at Bayern and under Klopp last season, but so far this season Gravenberch has played every single game in the position and it certainly can’t be a coincidence that Slot and Liverpool are now seeing the very best of the young talent on the pitch. 

Indeed, Gravenberch’s impressive start to the season earned him a €5 million upgrade in Transfermarkt’s recent Premier League market value update. Which now means the Dutch talent is valued at €40m – his highest market value rating to date, making him the tenth most valuable player at Liverpool and the fifth most valuable Premier League midfielder under the age of 23. And if he can continue thriving under Slot at Liverpool, there’s no reason to suggest that Gravenberch can’t finally fulfil his potential and develop into one of the English top-flight’s most accomplished holding midfielders in the years to come.