Fabrizio Romano has revealed that Liverpool were genuinely interested in signing Patson Daka, with the move having hinged on the club offloading one of Xherdan Shaqiri or Divock Origi early in the summer window.
As things transpired, the former wasn’t released until late in the window, with the latter remaining at Anfield, leaving rivals Leicester City an opening to swoop for the highly-rated former RB Salzburg hitman.
“Liverpool this summer had a strategy: sell some players and eventually sign some players,” the Sky Sports journalist told the Here We Go podcast.
“If they sold Shaqiri or Origi in the first days of June they had a chance to sign Patson Daka because they were interested in Patson Daka.
“They never made an official bid but they had an interest in this striker from Salzburg.
“Then it collapsed because of timing on Shaqiri who was sold in August and Origi who is staying at the club.
“But Patson Daka was one of the names on the list for Liverpool.”
The Reds were thought to be interested in attaining a new forward to bolster a forward line with limited quality backup beyond Diogo Jota.
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Having witnessed a dip in form from generally reliable frontmen in Sadio Mane and Bobby Firmino, our lack of activity in the window beyond an early move for Ibrahima Konate did understandably concern a considerable proportion of fans.
There’s no question that fears have been heightened following the big-money purchases of some of our less financially constrained rivals, with the idea of genuine depth having changed drastically in recent times.
While we’d have certainly liked to have seen Daka pull on the famous red during the window, we should theoretically have enough in the way of firepower this term if our current batch of forwards can keep up with their positive start to the campaign.