With the departure of Fabinho, Liverpool continued to target a midfielder who could handle the bottom of the midfield, but ended up losing Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia to Chelsea, and spent a few weeks chugging along.
However, they recovered quickly from that, adding experience to their midfield with the acquisition of Japanese midfielder Wataru Endo from Stuttgart.
Liverpool, looking to further strengthen their squad, are expected to acquire another midfielder, with various names being reported on a daily basis.
Fulham midfielder Joao Palhinha is one such player, who performed impressively last season despite being in the Premier League for the first time.
Although the possibility of a transfer fee skyrocketing and the fact that he is not a youngster at 28 years of age make it seem unlikely that he will be acquired, Dean Jones, an English journalist, avoided denying the possibility.
“I’m not going to rule out that they’re going to go for Palhinha, because I know that they definitely looked at him in the past and they do like him, but yeah, you can’t land Palhinha for even £50m, but they still have money to spend, they had £111m to spend on Caicedo and they’ve just done £20m on Endo, they have £80m to spend on Palhinha.”
“If they want to spend £80m on Palhinha we’ll have to just take it because I’m sure the player would be into it, but I don’t see it.”
Ranks FC Ultras Podcast
It is hard to accept the short-sighted idea that the price we offered for Moises Caicedo is the price we can offer as it is.
And if you ask whether the Portuguese midfielder is worth £80 million, everyone will say no.
He would certainly inject energy into the midfield, but it is hard to imagine Liverpool loosening their purse strings at this point. So, will the future come when the former Sporting midfielder defies expectations and plays at Anfield…?