Arthur Melo’s agent has insisted that the midfielder has been ‘unlucky’ with his loan spell at Liverpool.
The Brazil international came to Anfield from Juventus at the tail end of last summer’s transfer window on a one-year deal but has been consigned to a watching brief for almost all of his time on Merseyside.
His only senior appearance came in a 13-minute cameo towards the end of the 4-1 defeat at Napoli just after he joined the Reds (Transfermarkt), with surgery on a thigh problem sidelining him for the majority of the season.
Liverpool have the option of signing Arthur outright once his loan deal concludes, but his agent has suggested the player won’t be in Jurgen Klopp’s squad next term.
Speaking to TuttoMercatoWeb, Federico Pastorello said of his client: “He was unlucky: he arrived on the last day of the transfer market, he paid off for the season where he played little at Juventus, he was integrating and had a boring injury so he had to operate.
“It was three months of injury, he was on his second bench, I hope he can at least give his contribution. I think he’ll come back from loan and then we’ll see what to do.”
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Arthur came to Liverpool with a rich CV, having played for both Barcelona and Juventus, but he also had an unfortunate reputation for being injury-prone, all too frequently picking up a series of niggles during his time in Spain and Italy (as per Transfermarkt).
At the time of his arrival at Anfield, he seemed like an ideal addition to our midfield, a player at a prime age who boasted 22 caps for Brazil and had played in each of the previous four Champions League seasons (featuring in a certain semi-final on Merseyside in 2019…).
However, like Pastorello has said, luck simply hasn’t been on the 26-year-old’s side; and having barely seen him in action at all, the Reds can’t realistically commit to paying the €37.5m (£33m) purchase option (as per juventus.com) for a player with his unenviable injury record.
Whether he’ll add to his 13-minute tally between now and the season’s end remains to be seen, but this’ll almost certainly go down as a move which simply hasn’t worked out as intended for either club or player.