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"From the outside, it appears crazy," Jarell Quansah says, as he reflects on his recent summer, when dizzying change felt like a constant. "But it is one of them ... football is a unpredictable game."

A Brief Summary

Shortly after winning the European Under-21 Championship with England at the conclusion of June, Quansah opted to depart from Liverpool, to go to the Bundesliga side in a £30m deal.

The big fee equalled high expectations as the young defender was tasked with settling in in a foreign land and at a club where the turnover was substantial. The new manager had stepped in to succeed Xabi Alonso and a host of key players were departing or already left – including several high-profile names, Piero Hincapié, influential figures, Amine Adli, Granit Xhaka, Lukas Hradecky and team leaders.

Bundesliga Debut

Quansah's Bundesliga debut came on August 23rd at their home ground to their opponents and the centre-half scored after five minutes, albeit the achievement was undercut by tragedy. His primary thought was his former Liverpool teammate, who was killed in a car accident. Quansah performed Jota's gamer celebration as a mark of respect.

"Scoring on your first Bundesliga match, in front of home fans, after five minutes, is certainly a whirlwind," Quansah states. "But my overwhelming feeling was that it was a homage to Diogo."

Initial Struggles

The defender could have been forgiven for wondering what he had signed up for at the German club. From the promising start in their first league game, they fell to a 2-1 defeat and the next match on August 30th was just as bad. The squad threw away 2-0 and 3-1 leads to finish level at 10-man Werder Bremen, the tying goal coming in added time. It was not Ten Hag's team for much longer. His dismissal came on 1 September.

Maintaining Composure

Quansah does not come across as the type to fret. If calmness characterizes his playing style, it was on show during the conversation he gave after joining England for the international friendly against their rivals and the World Cup qualifier against Latvia.

Quansah has remained focused under the current coach, the Danish tactician, and persisted in doing what he originally planned to do at the team – compete. The new manager has established consistency. His team have three wins and one draw in four league matches along with ties in each of their Champions League ties. But there is a broader statistic that encourages Quansah, even bringing a measure of vindication. It is the fact that demonstrates he has played every minute of the club's campaign.

National Team Attention

It is something that the England head coach has noted. The England head coach was a admirer last season, including him when he named his first squad. After omitting him in the summer so that Quansah could focus on the youth tournament, he provided him with a late call-up in the autumn when John Stones was forced to withdraw.

Yet to earn his first cap, Quansah must have done something right in training and around the camp because he was selected at the beginning in the manager's squad selection for Wales and Latvia, effectively as a additional defensive option with the regular starter returning. The aspiration is a first appearance. It is another thing he would surely take in his stride.

Decision Making

"With my new club, the team were interested in me for a while and that's not just from the manager [Ten Hag]," Quansah says. "They were interested before he got appointed. So understanding it was a type of organizational choice and things would remain consistent with which manager was to take over ... it was easy for me to make that decision.

"We had a lot of players leaving and it's consistently challenging when you see important figures leave. It has been difficult to build the leadership groups but the results we have had [under Hjulmand] show that we have developed a competitive team with quality players. It is requiring patience to build and we are still progressing. But if we are achieving positive outcomes and not losing that is a good place to begin from."

Liverpool Departure

It had to have been a wrench for Quansah to leave Liverpool, his club from the age of five, where he experienced so many significant occasions – such as the Carabao Cup final victory over their London rivals in the previous season when he was introduced as an extra-time substitute.

Quansah was also a part of the previous campaign's Premier League title triumph. Yet his view of most of that achievement was not the perspective he would have preferred. He was an unused substitute on multiple matches in the competition, his four starts and nine appearances comparing unfavourably with his numbers from the prior season when he started nine games.

Career Development

"I consistently developed off top-level professionals around me at Liverpool and it's been so good for my career," he says. "But as a young centre-back, you require match experience and I'm will require hundreds of games to be where I want to be.

"I just wanted game time and when you are at a team like Liverpool, it's not guaranteed because there are world-class players all over the pitch. I wanted an environment where they can trust that I might make mistakes at times but they will see beyond that and see I can keep pushing and pushing."

Early Experience

Quansah remembers his loan to League One Bristol Rovers in the later part of that season where he debuted at professional level – multiple matches, to be precise. There were "numerous wake-up calls", he notes with a smile, beginning with his first game; a heavy loss at their opponents.

"That was a genuine revelation," Quansah reflects. "It was a really valuable chapter in my development because I aimed to take the subsequent progression to regular senior competition. Every game I learned something new. That's where I understood how crucial practical knowledge and match practice was. You could suggest it influenced my decision in the off-season."