According to journalist Rory Smith, Liverpool believe they now have a midfielder who could be ‘generational-defining’.
The summer transfer window ended with the Reds securing the signature of Ryan Gravenberch from Bayern Munich for £34m (The Times), their fourth and final midfield capture since the end of last season.
The Dutchman never got much of a look-in with the Bundesliga champions but, based on his prior performances at Ajax, there’s a belief that he could make a seismic impact at Anfield.
Speaking on The Monday Night Club on BBC Radio 5 Live, Rory Smith said of the 21-year-old: “I think at Ajax, he was fantastic. He looked like the next one off the conveyor belt. I think he was Frenkie de Jong’s direct replacement.
“He was the player that they’d earmarked to replace De Jong two or three years before he left [for Barcelona]. They said ‘Look, we’re going to have to shift De Jong out so we can get Gravenberch in’.
“He has the talent; he was one of three players I think Liverpool had identified as potential generational-defining midfielders along with [Jude] Bellingham and [Aurelien] Tchouameni, which isn’t bad company to keep.”
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With Liverpool unable to land either Bellingham or Tchouameni, both of whom are now at Real Madrid, they’ll see Gravenberch as a prize coup, especially having landed him with less than two hours left in the transfer window.
If – as Smith suggests – the Anfield hierarchy view the 21-year-old as a ‘generational’ talent, that speaks volumes of how much potential they see in him, especially under a manager like Jurgen Klopp.
Forget that the Dutchman started only three league games in just over a year at Bayern (WhoScored); for a player of his age to have already been at three of Europe’s biggest clubs (who’ve been champions of the continent 16 times between them) shows how gifted and highly-rated he is.
Gravenberch wasn’t signed in time to play in Liverpool’s win over Aston Villa just before the international break, but having irked his compatriots by opting out of Netherlands under-21 duty to focus on his new club, there’ll be great excitement around him whenever he makes his Reds debut.
That may well come in Saturday’s trip to Wolves, which begins a testing sequence of seven matches in 23 days as Klopp’s side aim to build upon a promising start to the season.
If he can live up to the ‘generational’ tag mentioned by Smith, the £34m spent on him will go down as one of the masterstroke transfers of the decade.
#Ep89 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones🎙️