Liverpool reportedly still stand a good chance of sorting out a transfer for Fabio Carvalho for the summer, despite things falling apart late in the evening on 31st January.
This comes from a joint Athletic piece from Paul Rutzler and Caoimhe O’Neill, Fulham and Liverpool correspondents respectively, with the pair confirming that a medical had gone ahead in London before a failure to complete paperwork derailed the proposed move.
The agreement of a fee between the clubs – a major breakthrough after it had initially appeared that talks were heading nowhere – stands as a good sign of a deal being thrashed out between the two as part of a pre-agreement.
A pre-agreement will be the making or breaking of Carvalho’s hopes of remaining in England and, more specifically, completing a permanent move to Merseyside to link up with Jurgen Klopp’s men.
This will hardly be considered a disaster regardless for us given the acquisition of one of the Portuguese top-flight’s most respected talents in FC Porto’s Luis Diaz – not to mention the fact that many had consigned Liverpool to a quiet winter window.
It’s a hugely positive indication for the kind of long-term replacement we’ll be getting for our resident transfer guru, Michael Edwards, in our former loan and partnerships manager, Julian Ward, who led on the deal for the 25-year-old Colombian.
Carvalho would have been the icing on a rather lovely surprise cake, though, the general consensus appears to be that an agreement can still be arranged between ourselves and Fulham before a feeding frenzy can ensue between European outfits who can snap up the teenager for a pittance in the summer and our domestic rivals.
The player is said, however, to be keen on a move to the red half of Merseyside, with the prospect of joining our star-studded squad a more than enticing prospect.
Assuming that Fulham are still hopeful of squeezing some value out of a player whose contract expires at the end of the season, we’d have to imagine they’d take a pre-agreement with Liverpool over the risky prospect of a tribunal.
On Liverpool’s part, it seems highly unlikely that so much effort will be simply chucked down the drain and forgotten about when it comes to a talent who has ambitions of winning the Ballon d’Or.
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The transfer of Fabio Carvalho now will have absolutely nothing to do with what Fulham want or do. This was their one chance of dictating how much money they could make from the deal. This is now solely down to what the player and more worryingly his agents will want. There are three possible outcomes here.
1. If the player is determined join Liverpool, then it’s all pretty straightforward.
2. If the money side of the deal becomes a bigger issue, the player is better of moving abroad, Germany in particular, is now a well trodden path, but in Carvalho’s case Portugal is a very natural option as well.
3. The final possibility is that another Premier League team move in and offer more to the player, this is going to be dictated by what the player does for Fulham for the rest of this season, if he tears it up, Liverpool may not get even close to signing him.