The ‘top boy’ Liverpool hope can replace Trent Alexander-Arnold ...Middle East

Back in November, Kylian Mbappe got one of the biggest Anfield cheers of the season. The French superstar found himself two feet off the ground and flying sideways, having been on the receiving end of a crunching slide tackle, to raucous Red acclaim.

The defender in question was not one of Liverpool’s own superstars – Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk or Andy Robertson – but a 21-year-old from Castlederg in West Tyrone starting a Champions League match for the first time, halting a counter-attack in emphatic fashion to leave the world’s most expensive footballer in a dejected heap.

His name is Conor Bradley, and if you haven’t heard of him yet, you soon will.

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There is a chance that Bradley will be Liverpool’s first-choice right-back next season. Alexander-Arnold’s contract is set to expire in the summer and there is no sign of a renewal, despite ongoing talks with Liverpool.

He is now free to talk to clubs overseas, since there are only six months left on his current deal, and Real Madrid even made a speculative offer to bring him to the Bernabeu this January for a reported fee of £20m, which Liverpool quickly dismissed. Los Blancos are in dire need of a replacement for Dani Carvajal, who tore his ACL in October, and Alexander-Arnold is seen as the short- and long-term replacement.

Madrid are confident they will get their man, despite Liverpool’s consistent briefings to the contrary, which would either leave the Reds needing to do some significant work in the transfer market, or pass the mantle straight on to Bradley, continuing his impressively speedy rise up the footballing ladder.

It’s narratively straightforward to define that 2-0 win over Real Madrid, or more forensically that tackle on Mbappe, as a coming-of-age moment for Bradley, who has 40 appearances for Liverpool in all competitions. Or even to paint his man-of-the-match performance against Chelsea in February as such. But more than half the senior games in his career so far have come not in the famous red, but in the white of Bolton, 35 miles up the M62. That is where he really cut his teeth in the professional game.

“When he joined I actually didn’t know who he was, and I don’t think most of the fan base did,” Ryan Latham, a Bolton season ticket holder for 15 years and co-host of the Trotter Chatter podcast, tells The i Paper.

“Most Liverpool fans didn’t know about him, to be honest.”

Their manager knew though. Even back in December 2021, when Bradley had only just dipped his toe in first-team action as a fresh-faced 18-year-old in the League Cup, Jurgen Klopp was speaking highly of him.

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“He’s a top boy. We love having him around here,” Klopp said. “He’s part of a group of young players which we are really excited about. The only young players don’t need is hassle around him. Let him grow. Let him develop. We let him do that here. We will take care that everything will be fine!”

A few months later, Bradley was out on loan at Bolton and quickly made an impression.

Latham adds: “The first home game of the season against Wycombe, we won 3-0 and he was excellent. I thought ‘right, we’ve got a player here’.

“He took to it so well and took it all in his stride. He doesn’t seem to get particularly rattled, very professional.

“He seems to have an old head. He’s very mature for a young lad.”

He was allowed to express his youthful exuberance tactically though, deployed as a wing-back in a back five, collecting five goals and four assists in a league season that ended, agonisingly, with play-off semi-final defeat.

“We didn’t really rely on him defensively too much. It was more the threat that he brought going forward that was so useful to us.

“I spent a lot of that year telling Liverpool fans how good this Conor Bradley was and they kept looking at me like I had three heads!”

His attacking prowess would not have come as a surprise to Bradley’s nearest and dearest, given he often featured as a striker during his developmental years in Northern Ireland, including Joe McAree, a legend of youth football in County Tyrone, came across him at the age of 11.

“I was asked to go to a cup final in Omagh to watch Conor playing for St Pat’s, who deserve tremendous credit for the start in the game they gave him,” McAree told the BBC.

“Conor played up front that night. He wasn’t half the size of the other players because he always played in the age group above.

“I cannot believe he is now playing right-back, though. He was a forward player for us, spraying the ball around the pitch. His passing was exceptional. His awareness of where to distribute a ball – that was Conor’s strength, and he could cover the ground as well.

“What sticks in my head was how he looked me in the eye, how he shook my hand and how he reacted when I spoke to him – a country boy with a down-to-earth personality.”

Son of Linda and Joe, who sadly passed away in February 2024 having run a van dealership his whole life, Bradley signed for McAree’s employer, Dungannon Swifts two years later. He popped up on Liverpool’s radar too, spending his Friday nights attending the Premier League side’s school of excellence in Belfast. The Reds kept close tabs on him, sending a senior coach over to Dungannon to see where Bradley was playing his regular football and ensure facilities and coaching was up to scratch.

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Eventually, he moved across the Irish Sea to Liverpool on a youth contract at the age of 16 for a two-year scholarship which he never completed: Bradley signed a full contract after just 12 months and turned professional.

And he had already made his debut for the first-team, Liverpool’s first Northern Irish player since 1954, by the time he was sent to Bolton for a year in 2022. He had hoped simply to play more games, given his lack of top-level experience, but ended up getting a whole lot more than that.

Including his international call-ups, Bradley played 59 games in the season, helping Bolton to a fifth-place finish and playing a key role in their lifting of the EFL Trophy in a Wembley final victory over Plymouth. He also won the club’s Player of the Year, Players’ Player of the Year and Young Player of the Year awards.

“It was the consistency that he offered. It got to a point where teams were double-marking him on that side,” says Latham.

“When we played Plymouth in the final, they ended up swapping their full-back for the second half because he just couldn’t cope with him.

“And I think that shows that the level that he was at. We almost didn’t realise what we had at the time.”

Now, Bolton fans gaze across to the Merseyside coast with no jealousy, but affection.

“It was a typical ‘Don’t fall in love with loan player’ moment, but we did. Now [when Bradley plays for Liverpool], it’s like watching your kids playing,” Latham adds.

“I think that that’s shared throughout the fan base. He has a place in Bolton fans’ hearts.”

He has a small place in Liverpool fans’ affections already too, that tackle on Mbappe alone earning it. He did something similar in one of his first appearances for Northern Ireland, coming off the bench against Switzerland and immediately drawing a huge roar from the Windsor Park crowd.

“The thing about Conor is he is aggressive,” said Jim Magilton, a former Premier League midfielder and manager, then working for the Irish FA.

“He tackles. People look at him as this quietly spoken kid but he’s got devilment – he couldn’t wait to make that tackle against Switzerland. He would line them up and be licking his lips. You could see that toughness in him which I always loved.”

Replacing Alexander-Arnold as Liverpool’s first choice right-back would be a significant step up, but the 21-year-old has not yet found one too high for him.

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