Following on from the end of the March international break, Liverpool fans can look forward to Jurgen Klopp’s first team squad renewing their charge for the English top flight title, especially as it will be our 56 year old’s last attempt to add a second one to his tally, having already announced his intention to step away from the club at the end of the current 2023/24 campaign.
With ten games remaining in our domestic league campaign, we are joint top on points with Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal team (64), and one point ahead of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side, and now we are truly in the business end of the campaign, we simply cannot slip up.
Whatever ultimately happens over the coming weeks of the campaign, it is set to be a very busy summer at Anfield, and from our point of view the first task is to sort out Klopp’s replacement. With a new manager on board before we start wheeling and dealing in the transfer window should give us a far better chance of continuing with some momentum into the coming 2024/25 season. For those fans who like a flutter and take betting odds from a reliable source, you are bound to have a pick of options when we look into the season ahead as absolutely anything could happen.
On the playing staff side of life, there are also some big decisions to be made with some key players featuring heavily when it comes to the rumour mill and their potential futures, and speculation surrounding Mohamed Salah just will not go away either – particularly given Saudi Arabia’s emergence as a lucrative destination last summer.
He is obviously not the only one though, as there has certainly been an uptick in departure speculation once Klopp announced his own decision, and it covered Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and even stories that some new recruits were now looking to move on.
Liverpool fans know that 95% of these claims have just been media invention as we see it every season, but there are naturally very valid concerns given how huge a summer this will now be for us.
So it is no surprise to see Spanish La Liga giants Real Madrid reportedly sniffing around one of our players again, and this time it is rather predictably TAA. But despite the speculation growing with suggestions that Los Blancos are ‘actively monitoring’ the situation and that they are ready to make a move if they feel an opportunity has presented itself, there is a big question mark over their heads when it comes to their own financial situation, and that begs the question, could they even afford him given what we all presume would be the valuation we would demand if we were even open to the idea of a sale.
That is before we even address the question as to whether or not the boyhood Liverpool supporter and Academy product would want to move, or whether like Steven Gerrard who came before him, he more values loyalty and his existing emotional attachment to us.
It is such an obvious piece of rumour mill folly to link our vice skipper with Real, but it is media talk. There is no way we would be looking to sell, especially with the upheaval we can anticipate this summer anyway, and TAA has shown absolutely no signs of being interested in moving on anyway, although we can make an educated guess that negotiations on any new deal would take his salary more to parity with our other big name, and key, stars.
There is little doubt that TAA may one day end up at the Santiago Bernabeu, but it feels incredibly unlikely that it will happen any time soon – at the very least, not this summer.
