Romeo Lavia was an unused substitute during Southampton’s Championship opener against Sheffield Wednesday.
Sky Sports reported that the former Manchester City youth product was an available option. However, Joe Aribo, Stuart Armstrong and eventual match-winner Che Adams were instead favoured for minutes.
Lavia benched for Southampton’s Championship opener and yet (at the time of writing [75 mins played]) to make an appearance 👀👀
Telling that ⬇️ #LFC pic.twitter.com/gdOuBkAfjH
— Farrell Keeling (@farrellkeeling) August 4, 2023
The Brussels-born midfielder has been heavily linked with a Liverpool switch this summer and the Saints are understood to have already rejected two bids from the former.
That said, this latest development would most certainly suggest some further movement on that front.
Whilst we’ve hardly, of late, been the kind of club to blindly throw money at a solution, there is an underlying and growing sense of tension amongst the fanbase at our patient, probing approach.
Given how the evident need for – at very least – one holding midfielder to replace our departed specialist No.6 in Fabinho, it will hardly come as a comfort to glance at the calendar and note that our own league opener with Chelsea is just over a week away.
Hardly the full pre-season period Jurgen Klopp will have been banking on to bed in new signings as he has with Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister.
In a position too that may require a perfect bespoke peg to fit an equally bespoke hole, Liverpool’s financial prudence could land the club in some serious hot water as far as results are concerned this term.
Only time will tell whether the wait justified the end.
#Ep83 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones