Having missed out on signing Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace, with a summer deadline day move falling apart and then the player opting to join Manchester City in January rather than seeing out the season and his contract with London’s Eagles, Liverpool are in need of new defensive targets.
This is the reality, with the club currently down to three fit senior centre halves including captain Virigil van Dijk, soon to be out of contract Ibrahima Konate, and injury-prone Joe Gomez. More depth and, if Konate departs,
quality is needed. It’s also a void into which the rumours mongers will eagerly step.
As such, over the past few days there has been a rapid growth in speculation surrounding Borussia Dortmund’s Nico Schlotterbeck, a 26-year-old German international who will have just a year left on his contract come the summer and who has so far resisted Dortmund’s efforts to get a new deal done.
Schlotterbeck was offered a new deal last summer but rejected it, but Dortmund haven’t given up completely and Bild this week say they’re now willing to offer him a new deal with a €60M release clause to keep him around—or at least ensure they get compensated a little better if and when he leaves.
Meanwhile, chatter out of Germany further suggests his wage demands are seen as excessive by Bayern Munich and as such he isn’t a target despite being one of the nation’s top centre halves and a regular in the national team. In addition to Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham have been linked.
From a Liverpool point of view, Schlotterbeck checks the boxes as a centre half who could replace Konate in the lineup if the French international moves on this summer when his contract expires. Whether that makes their interest genuine or just rumour monger chatter is, for now, a different question.
