According to Spanish news sources, Liverpool is reportedly interested in two players from Athletic Bilbao and one from Borussia Monchengladbach.
Cody Gakpo was acquired by the Reds from PSV Eindhoven during the January transfer window, but Jurgen Klopp is likely to be busier in the summer as he attempts to revamp a team that has struggled mightily this season.
Following their embarrassing 3-0 loss against Wolves on Saturday, Liverpool is currently in 10th place in the Premier League and out from both domestic competitions. The Reds, who last season came dangerously near to winning an unheard-of quadruple, are expected to need to rebuild once the 2022–23 season comes to a finish, even though they are still in the Champions League.
To that goal, according to AS, the six-time European Cup winners are planning to “test” Athletic Bilbao’s resolve over two of its marquee players, Nico Williams and Oihan Sancet, along with Premier League rivals Aston Villa.
According to the Spanish publication, Bilbao will insist on the full £45 million release clause for Williams, a 20-year-old winger who has six goals in 25 games this season (including performances before the World Cup). The international player from Spain’s contract expires in 2024.
Sancet, meanwhile, has only 18 months left on his contract. By Transfermarkt, the 22-year-old midfielder is presently valued at £18 million.However, given his current campaign’s performances—the Spain Under-21 international has seven goals in 20 La Liga games, including a hat-trick in a 4-1 home victory over Cadiz on Friday—Bilbao would likely demand a considerably higher price for him.
According to the article, the Basque team is still convinced that fresh contracts can be reached with Williams and Sancet, despite the Premier League being a major draw.
Marcus Thuram, a forward for Monchengladbach, is reportedly a target for Liverpool, according to AS.When his contract expires in the summer, the 25-year-old, who is the elder brother of Lille midfielder Khephren and the son of Juventus icon Lillian, will be free to sign with any team.
Additionally, the nine-cap France international is seen as a potential summer signing by Reds manager Klopp, according AS. Thuram has scored 13 goals in 20 appearances for Monchengladbach this season, but teams like Arsenal, Newcastle United, and Tottenham Hotspur have also been linked with a move for him.
Liverpool have a £550m problem that will complicate Jude Bellingham transfer
Liverpool’s summer spending requirements will likely be impacted by Chelsea’s late-January transfer chase for Enzo Fernandez on Tuesday.
When Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital took over as Chelsea’s owners in May of last year, they spent almost £550 million on 17 players, eight of whom joined during the January transfer window, when they outspent La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, and the Bundesliga combined in spending.
It was a success for perseverance, but more so for the tenacity of selling club Benfica, since it enabled them to sign 21-year-old Fernandez, an Argentina World Cup champion, in December.
The Portuguese team had maintained a firm attitude that Fernandez would only leave for the full amount of his €120 million (£105 million) buyout clause. Benfica sold a player for £95 million more than they paid for him last summer after Chelsea finally gave in to their demands.
It will take some time to determine whether the £105 million paid, a British transfer record, will be money well spent for Chelsea, but Fernandez had an impressive start for them in their 0-0 draw at home to Fulham on Friday night.
Many Reds supporters were upset with Liverpool’s lack of activity in January. The single transaction that was made during the transfer window was the £37 million acquisition of Cody Gakpo from PSV Eindhoven.
With a big rebuilding of the team necessary this summer, especially in midfield, owners Fenway Sports Group, who are aggressively seeking new funding through an equity sale but are still open to a full sale, will likely need to dig deeper and spend more on transfers than they ever have.
Liverpool’s top candidate on its shortlist is still Jude Bellingham. Their inaction in January has only served to highlight how urgent it is for them to sign the 19-year-old England and Borussia Dortmund midfielder, but with Real Madrid and others interested, it is a risky move. In particular, if Liverpool’s sputtering season continues and they miss out on the lucrative bounty that could be theirs,
Chelsea has at least demonstrated to the Reds where they need to be in the summer by signing Fernandez, a player with whom Liverpool was also associated.
The Fernandez transfer was likely something Dortmund was interested in. His World Cup accomplishments undoubtedly helped raise his price tag and Chelsea’s willingness to pay it. He is two years older than Bellingham but has less club football experience at the highest level. In order for Liverpool to sign Bellingham, they would almost probably need to break the previous British transfer record, and it is difficult to see how much more they could pay than £120 million.
Similar to how football clubs are valued, a key component of the most recent contract dictating the terms of the subsequent one is player transfers. Chelsea has established a new benchmark for clubs in the market after spreading the impact on their accounts by amortizing the cost of transfers over longer periods of seven and eight year contracts. Given the need to spend heavily this summer, this benchmark has likely arrived at the worst possible time for FSG. The ability to negotiate steep discounts is dwindling, making it more difficult to discover the value that once existed in places like Portugal.
In the event that someone balks and opts for a pre-contract agreement, Dortmund will be more confident to stand their ground on Bellingham and capitalize on the bidding war that is anticipated to develop for his services in the summer.
Liverpool will at least be aware that they will be held accountable for any such agreement. It will be interesting to see if they have the appetite to go as far as they will need to in order to land their top target.
Sadio Mane could hold key to Mohamed Salah revival after role in Liverpool decline
To suggest Liverpool’s circumstances now aren’t much different than they were a year ago would be a major understatement.
After surviving a brief slump in late December 2021 in which the Reds lost ground to Manchester City in the race for the title and ultimately dropped seven points in just under two weeks, Jurgen Klopp’s team would go on a run of 10 straight victories in the Premier League and consequently wouldn’t drop a point until their eagerly awaited trip to the Etihad in early April 2022.
Sadio Mane served as the catalyst for such a historic comeback. After engaging in extensive introspection in the first half of the season, Mane decided to refocus his efforts.
He was revitalized as a result of a brilliant tactical change made by the Liverpool manager, and he at last found his feet at Anfield once more.
The Senegalese forward shone throughout a tense season as he led the Reds to domestic kingship and cemented his own reputation as one of the continent’s most feared and talented wingers. He played a key role in Liverpool ending their 30-year wait for a league title in the summer of 2020.
Mane had actually contributed to Liverpool winning their sixth European Cup the season before. With a final-day brace against Wolverhampton Wanderers in May 2019, he also shot to the top of the Premier League Golden Boot standings. He later shared the honor with Mohamed Salah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who were both playing for Liverpool at the time.
It meant that there was a great deal of sadness at both Anfield and the AXA Training Center last summer when Mane decided to retire after six trophy-laden years on Merseyside, with both Real Madrid and Bayern Munich aggressively sniffing around for any indication the forward would be open to seeking pastures new.
In actuality, though, such grief was swiftly forgotten as sports director Julian Ward was able to reach a crucial agreement with agent Ramy Abbas over an extension of Salah’s stay at Anfield. A few days later, a small group of club personnel would fly to Mykonos, Greece, where the Egyptian was taking some time off, and there they would quickly sign, seal, and deliver the largest contract in the club’s 130-year history.
If Salah was able to maintain the form that saw him score 156 goals in 254 appearances during the previous season, the three-year contract he signed poolside of the Egyptian’s Greek retreat would be a highly-incentivized one and eventually place Salah in the category of some of the Premier League’s top earners.
Salah has struggled to settle in current season, nearly eight months after such a significant moment in the history of the football team. Erling Haaland’s remarkable exploits on the opposite side of the M62 have eclipsed his meager return of seven Premier League goals in 20 appearances so far.
Of course, the once trophy-winning machine that Klopp spent the better part of six years methodically developing with trainers Pep Lijnders and Peter Krawietz has a number of flaws right now.
The 3-0 humiliation Liverpool suffered on Saturday in the West Midlands is a sign that, contrary to what Klopp believes, things can get much worse. It shows that Liverpool are a defense that is helpless, disorganized, and unmatchable to pretty much everything that has been thrown their way in the Premier League this season. The Reds’ chosen three in the middle of the park are easily past on nearly a weekly basis as a result of certain players’ unexplainable nosedives in midfield, especially Fabinho, who was once hailed as the greatest that Europe has to offer.
Salah has been abnormally isolated on the right side of the attack this season as a result of these problems, and he is having little to no impact on what is happening. Alarmingly, only Alisson Becker, Cody Gakpo, Darwin Nunez, and Naby Keita had fewer touches than the Egyptian’s 39 during Liverpool’s Saturday defeat in the West Midlands.
Salah is now averaging his fewest touches per 90 minutes (39.5) and in the opponent’s penalty area in his six seasons since returning to the Premier League (7.51).
Naturally, it goes without saying that Salah is not the only cause of Liverpool’s struggles this season, with transitional problems and the 30-year-failure old’s to win duels in the middle of the field restricting his impact. But that doesn’t mean Klopp is currently facing a new challenge as a result of the forward’s problems.
One year ago this week, the 30-year-old returned from the Africa Cup of Nations after competing with Egypt. Despite reaching the Cameroon final, the Pharaohs were unable to add a record eighth championship to their collection as Mane calmly converted the game-winning penalty to give Senegal their first victory.
The former Roma and Fiorentina attacker was unquestionably the best player in Europe before leaving Merseyside to link up with his international teammates. The talk of a potential Ballon d’Or glistening around Anfield later that year for the first time since 2001 slowly but surely increased after sublime individual goals against Manchester City and Watford in back-to-back Premier League games in October 2021 underlined his ranking in the top echelons of the world game.
Salah has scored just 14 Premier League goals in 35 appearances since his comeback against Leicester City on February 10 2022, which resulted in a 2-0 victory.
The Reds occasionally had the luxury of being saved throughout that stretch, primarily between February and May, by Mane, Jota, and the prompt arrival of January signing Luis Diaz while the Egyptian continued to find his footing amongst the strain of Liverpool’s historic quadruple hunt.
But after years of being hailed as Liverpool’s Egyptian King, Salah now ironically finds himself receiving service befitting a pauper as he fails to function with the same slickness and efficiency that saw him snare every individual honor these shores had to give in prior seasons.Salah is no longer the same explosive, slick forward who made an absolute mockery of English football and all of its records between 2017 and 2021. This is the truth, as hard as it is to accept.
Of course, this does not imply that his tenure at Anfield is over—far from it. But with Liverpool facing a desperate, last-ditch effort to preserve their season, a change more centrally must be applied if Liverpool and Klopp are to benefit from their No.11 between now and 2025. Instant changes are required.