Having missed out on the signing of Marc Guéhi from Crystal Palace on transfer deadline day after Palace accepted a £35M offer but manager Oliver Glasner threatened to walk away from the club if owner Steve Parish gave final sign-off on the deal, the question became when—or if—the Reds might return for him.
Immediately following the collapse of the transfer there were stories proposing a £25M January bid, but those never made a lot of sense from a Liverpool point of view given Palace rejected a £70M
bid in January from Spurs for Guéhi and his value has dropped to £35M in the summer at which point he had a year left on his contract.
Those stories perhaps represented Palace and Parish’s hope. Now, we have what we can presume to be Liverpool’s stance on the matter. Which is that they won’t move for Guéhi mid-season and instead will be content to consider their options and would only consider moving for the player now on a free next summer.
That according to The Times’ Paul Joyce, who says that Liverpool have made clear they wouldn’t see value in paying a significant fee for a player who will have just six months left on his contract in January. There is, one imagines, an obvious caveat regarding their current centre half stable staying fit through January.
If Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konaté, and Joe Gomez can stay fit, though—and if 18-year-old rising Italian star Giovanni Leoni perhaps establishes himself as a viable option—paying to add a fifth positional player mid-season wouldn’t make much sense. Not when the Reds can likely sign him on a free a few months down the road.
It’s also possible over the coming season a new name will emerge who proves more appealing to Liverpool, while Konaté‘s future, uncertain while they were attempting to sign Guéhi over the summer, should also have become far more clear by the time the transfer window opens up again—and certainly will by next summer.
