Hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing…
And few would have predicted that Dele Alli would already be one of Europe’s most effective midfielders, aged 21, when he was pulling up trees in League One two seasons ago.
But it still doesn’t stop Liverpool’s failed attempts to sign him from hurting, especially when the Englishman’s a Liverpool fan and by all accounts was desperate for a Merseyside move before Spurs swooped.
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According to departing CEO Ian Ayre, Liverpool basically thought Alli was too expensive and refused to meet the £5m valuation Tottenham agreed to.
“On Alli, there was interest in the player,” Ayre told a lecture at St George’s Hall for Liverpool John Moores University, cited in the Express.
“But where it got to was that the demands at that time were not fitting to what he had achieved at that point.
“We didn’t feel the player matched that demand.
“It’s easy to sit and say look what you could have bought, but how many players could you apply the reverse of that to?”
We’d find Ayre’s words easier to stomach if we hadn’t shelled out over £5m on the likes of Tiago Ilori and Luis Alberto, who were unproven themselves.
Alli notched 16 goals from central midfield in 2014/15 for MK Dons, as a 17/18-year-old, but there’s nothing we can do about it now except watch him develop into one of the world’s best players from afar!
As transfer blunders go, this will turn out to be one of the worst.