Liverpool ended last season looking well short of options on the wings then watched as Mohamed Salah left the club after upper management pushed for a parting of ways with the aging legend and the player and club agreed a mutual termination of the final year of his contract.
The club quickly signed Victor Muñoz from Osasuna, but the plan—and need—was always for the club to make a further two attacking signings, with one of them always intended to be a player who everyone agreed was a star and finished
product, the so-called Salah replacement.
That hasn’t gone to plan, with Yan Diomande turning out to be leading the Reds on to help get the move he really wanted to Real Madrid. Since that happened, the club have been locked in a stalemate with Paris Saint-Germain, trying to sign both Bradley Barcola and Ibrahim Mbaye.
Today, finally—and just three days before Liverpool’s season kicks off—we’re finally hearing word of at least one alternate option should Barcola and Mbaye prove unobtainable, and that option appears to be Brighton’s 22-year-old Gambian right winger Yankuba Minteh.
For most, Minteh would be an alternative to Mbaye and not Barcola. At least if Liverpool and sporting director Richard Hughes have any interest in not setting up new head coach Andoni Iraola for failure before Hughes pops the parachute and leaves the club for his Saudi payday.
Brighton, though, may not be any more interested in giving a desperate Liverpool a deal than PSG, as reports today from everyone from The Athletic’s James Pearce and David Ornstein to TalkSport’s Ben Jacobs to The Times’ Paul Joyce say a £50M bid has been rejected.
It should also perhaps be remembered Minteh was available in 2024, Hughes’ first summer, and instead joined Brighton from Newcastle for £30M. Despite being reliably linked with Liverpool at the time, Hughes and the Reds decided not to follow through on a potential deal.
After passing on Minteh then, Liverpool made no attacking signings that summer. In fact, the only deal Hughes actually got done in 2024 was the misguided signing of Giorgi Mamardashvili to be Alisson Becker’s long-term replacement. He also got fooled by Martin Zubimendi.
Now he’s overseen a Liverpool side already thin in attack seeing off Salah before spending the summer failing to get the necessary signings done, and with the season about to kick off and less than two weeks to go in the transfer window everyone knows the Reds are desperate.
Good job, Richard. Good process.
