There is plenty going on in the summer transfer window at the moment, but Liverpool appear to be only on a watching brief for the time being.
The Reds have already signed Darwin Nunez , Fabio Carvalho and Calvin Ramsay and seem perfectly happy with their business. Sadio Mane has left for Bayern Munich , while a handful of others could follow suit in the coming weeks.
Liverpool are not out of the game, yet Jurgen Klopp is currently content with his lot. As it has been for much of the last year, the question of Mohamed Salah’s long-term future and the prospect of a new contract remains the big talking point on the red side of Merseyside.
That picture allows Liverpool to prepare for the 2022/23 season while keeping an interested eye on the business being done by their Premier League rivals. There is nothing much to see at Old Trafford, where Manchester United are still yet to bring in any new recruits for Erik ten Hag, but the other four members of the Big Six are busy.
Like Liverpool, Tottenham have already signed three players: Ivan Perisic, Fraser Forster and Yves Bissouma. Unlike Liverpool, they have designs on more . Chelsea have not signed any new players, but have big plans and a £200million budget under the Todd Boehly ownership. Arsenal have brought in Marquinhos, Matt Turner and Fabio Vieira and are closing in on more. Manchester City got Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez done early and are now close to landing Leeds’ Kalvin Phillips .
The Premier League’s biggest and richest clubs getting business done in the summer transfer window is nothing new. What is intriguing this year, however, is the nature of the business, with the sides trading between each other.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Does trading between rivals matter in the transfer market? Comment below.
The two most significant transfers currently in the making are Man City’s Gabriel Jesus moving to Arsenal for around £45m and Raheem Sterling possibly going to Chelsea for a fee which could reach £55m . Both players are entering the final year of their contracts and make sense for the buying clubs. Yet Liverpool may still be quietly smug when seeing the transfers play out from afar.
Liverpool’s transfer policy under former sporting director Michael Edwards – and in the early days of his successor Julian Ward’s time in charge – has rightly received a lot of credit. Most of that praise has been centred around the club signing top-quality players who have been able to hit the ground running once arriving at Anfield.
But what has perhaps gone under the radar is where they have been buying players from. Of Liverpool’s last 17 significant signings who arrived for transfer fees, only one has been purchased from a direct rival: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who joined from Arsenal for a fee of around £35m in August 2017.
The rest have all joined from foreign clubs, or those further down the pecking order in England: Nunez (Benfica), Carvalho ( Fulham ), Ramsay (Aberdeen), Ibrahima Konate (RB Leipzig), Luis Diaz (Porto), Diogo Jota ( Wolves ), Thiago Alcantara (Bayern Munich), Kostas Tsimikas (Olympiacos), Takumi Minamino (RB Leipzig), Alisson (Roma), Naby Keita (RB Leipzig), Fabinho (Monaco), Xherdan Shaqiri (Stoke City), Virgil van Dijk ( Southampton ), Salah (Roma) and Andy Roberston (Hull City).
At first glance that may not appear to be significant, but it remains subtly advantageous nonetheless. City sending Sterling to Chelsea can be seen as strengthening the hand of a rival for the Premier League title, while the Blues paying £55m to the reigning champions does something similar.
Arsenal are hoping to break into the top four next season. Jesus will undoubtedly help them do that next season. But giving the best team in the country a large amount of money could simply be handing them more funds for use in the coming weeks.
In the grand scheme of things, such nuances could be considered minor and unimportant. But the detail which goes into Liverpool’s transfer plans suggests such a trend is not a coincidence.
