Not Jacquet: Liverpool complete deadline-day business

Liverpool have completed transfer deadline day business by agreeing to terminate James McConnell’s loan at Ajax, with the Dutch club confirming the administrative process is now finished and the midfielder has been away from the first-team group for weeks.

While plenty of names get thrown around late in the window, this is a clear, confirmed piece of business on deadline day.

Ajax’s club website statement makes the timeline pretty explicit, and it also helps explain why this has been framed as a formal termination rather than a simple “he’s not playing” situation.

“Ajax, James McConnell, and Liverpool FC have reached an agreement to formally terminate the player’s loan.

“The administrative process has been completed, and the player himself has not been part of the Ajax squad since early January.

“The 21-year-old defensive midfielder’s contract with Ajax originally ran until the end of the current season… He made a total of seven official appearances for Ajax’s first team.”

Liverpool have now brought the 21-year-old back under our control, which opens the door to a reset between now and the summer rather than letting the situation drift until May.

McConnell loan termination and what it means for Liverpool

McConnell, who has been viewed positively by Arne Slot and academy staff, went to the Netherlands in the summer hoping to get senior minutes and accelerate his development in a different environment.

The move always carried a bit of risk, because a young defensive midfielder needs rhythm, trust, and repeated chances to learn from mistakes, and those things can disappear quickly when a club changes direction mid-season.

John Heitinga’s departure from Ajax clearly didn’t help, because even if the original plan was to give the English youngster a runway, that kind of continuity is usually the first thing to vanish when coaching staff are replaced.

Slot’s own comments last campaign show that Liverpool were thinking carefully about McConnell’s pathway, and the manager sounded like someone who rated the player but wanted the next step to be the right one.

“There is definitely one of them that will not go on loan – and I think you know which one I mean. James McConnell.

“I wouldn’t say definitely, but I liked him a lot today… He impressed me a lot today.”

McConnell stats at Ajax and why another loan looks likely

The numbers underline why this spell never really got going in league terms, because the sample size is small enough that it’s hard to draw anything other than “limited opportunity”.

Here is McConnell’s 2025/26 Eredivisie output for Ajax, via SofaScore.

That profile doesn’t scream failure as much as it suggests the season became a stop-start learning curve, and Liverpool’s decision to end the loan early is a fairly logical attempt to salvage the second half of the campaign.

An update last month pointed in this direction anyway, with the suggestion that Liverpool were weighing up a recall because the midfielder wasn’t getting the consistent run a 21-year-old needs.

“The 21-year-old is ‘likely to be recalled’ to Anfield in January after falling out of favour in Amsterdam”

If another loan follows, it needs to be one built around weekly football rather than prestige, because the quickest way for McConnell to push back into Slot’s thinking is by playing 90 minutes regularly and showing that his best traits can hold up in senior football.

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The post Not Jacquet: Liverpool complete deadline-day business appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.