Our friends at Anfield HQ secured an excellent interview with Sunday Times correspondent Jonathan Northcroft – and the journalist gave his thoughts on Liverpool in the transfer market.
According to the reporter, our ‘priorities’ in 2018 will be finishing what we tried to do this summer just gone…
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As all Liverpool fans know, Jurgen Klopp desperately wanted Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk and submitted a club record offer for Monaco’s Thomas Lemar – failing to get either deal over the line before September.
Northcroft reckons before anybody else, we’ll target this pair – who’d surely cost £150m-odd between them.
“I’m not sure they’ll be doing much business,” he said. “You can see with the signing of Keita a year in advance that the style is still long term. The priorities for 2018 will be Keita, another go for Van Dijk and possibly another attempt at landing Lemar, and summer is the likeliest time for the latter two to happen.
“That said, if Liverpool can pick up a centre back, DCM or goalkeeper of the requisite class in January, they should do it.”
We think there’s actually possibilities that we’ll end up more surprised than this.
Right now, nobody knows exactly who Klopp and his scouts have earmarked, which is the way it should be.
We agree that January business is unlikely, with Klopp only ever having signed Steven Caulker on loan in the winter, but by the time summer 2018 comes round – we may have entirely different issues to address!
Still, Lemar and van Dijk are top players and would improve our starting XI; especially the latter, while the former has the talent to develop into one of Europe’s best players.