Liverpool are hot on the heels of Lille forward Nicolas Pepe, reports L’Equipe.
The French outlet, whose reliability is varied, have penned an article in which they claim the winger is ‘fast approaching’ an exit.
They suggest that Inter Milan have lodged a €70m bid for his services, but that Liverpool are closing in on Pepe’s €80m asking price.
Liverpool have accelerated interest in Lille attacker Nicolas Pépé & appear to be closing in on offering the €80m excluding bonuses demanded by Les Dogues, according to L'Équipe.
— Get French Football News (@GFFN) June 6, 2019
In 2018/19, Pepe scored 22 goals and registered 11 assists in Ligue 1 – a phenomenal return from a wide-player.
He is fast, skilful, has an eye for the net and importantly, is versatile – able to play from the right or the left.
Stylistically, he reminds us of Sadio Mane, which is of course an enormous compliment.
If you want to check out the Ivorian’s best bits, this video will leave you fairly excited!
Our issue with the L’Equipe report however is that they suggest Pepe could be a replacement for Mo Salah, which is obviously complete nonsense.
Our Egyptian sensation is going absolutely nowhere, so for L’Equipe to even suggest it as a possibility makes us think they’ve maybe jumped the gun on the Pepe news, too.
So for this reason, we’ll wait until Melissa Reddy or one of her peers gets in on the act before getting properly excited.
Having said that, Pepe fits the bill in terms of what we need – so we wouldn’t be at all surprised if the reports were legitimate.