John Aldridge: Liverpool's stance on
Coutinho must be strong
John Aldridge
August 10 2017 2:30 AM
I'm pretty sure that Philippe Coutinho wants to
join Barcelona - but the Liverpool owners have to
stand firm if they are to quell a simmering mood
of unrest among the club's supporters.
For a South American player, the lure of playing
for Real Madrid or Barcelona is impossible to
resist and we should not be surprised if he has
told Liverpool he wants to go.
The language, the weather and everything about
Barcelona will appeal to a Brazilian footballer
who has probably spent his life dreaming about
this move and the Catalan negotiators trying to
get the deal done know they have that pulling
power on their side.
Barcelona were always likely to go after
Coutinho following Neymar's departure to Paris
Saint-Germain and at the end of the day, the
player will get his wish if he pushes hard enough
for the move.
Liverpool would get in excess of £100m for their
Brazilian playmaker in this crazy summer
transfer market and while that might look like
good business to the number crunchers at
Anfield, there is a much bigger overall story to
look at here.
I have met Coutinho a few times and he is a
great lad, with a good family behind him. He has
enjoyed his time in Liverpool and would
probably not want to leave for any other club.
Yet this is Barcelona. This is the chance to play
with Lionel Messi every week. This is a special
club and I can understand why he feels
compelled to go after it.
The danger for Liverpool's owners is balancing
whether they can allow this deal to go through
against keeping a player who wants to leave.
We can all understand why Coutinho fancies the
move, yet the danger must be that the Liverpool
fans will go mad if their hero is posing in a Barca
shirt at the Nou Camp in the next few days.
After two years when the club has not spent too
much money in the transfer market, the fans
want to see big name arrivals at Anfield and not
the sale of another key player to Barcelona.
Liverpool couldn't stop Luis Suarez leaving for
the Nou Camp a couple of years back, but the
supporters accepted that after the owners
stopped a potential move to Arsenal the previous
summer.
So maybe the best Liverpool fans can hope for
now is for the club to sit down with Coutinho
and ask him to give the club one more year.
That's what they did with Suarez when he
seemed keen to join Arsenal and the extra
season Liverpool had from him was sensational.
It might need manager Jurgen Klopp and the
Anfield board to sit down with Coutinho and ask
him to put his ambitions to move to one of the
big Spanish clubs on to the back-burner for 12
months and see where Liverpool are at that
point.
Of course, the player and his agent will argue
that an offer from Barcelona may not be there a
year from now and that's the dilemma Coutinho
faces.
In a summer when Liverpool fans were hoping to
see big name arrivals at Anfield, we are heading
into the new season this weekend with just one
big name arrival in Mohamed Salah and no
progress on bids for Southampton's Virgil van
Dijk and Leipzig's Naby Keita.
It was already a disappointing situation, but I
think supporters appreciate how difficult it is to
get deals done in a climate where massive
transfer fees are being quoted and rich clubs
don't need to sell their best players.
However, those are the excuses and the reality
must be that Liverpool's transfer summer has yet
to take off, with Klopp the frontman who will
take the blame if this season goes wrong.
At the end of the day, the club has a great
manager in place here and they need to back
him because if they don't, Klopp might start
questioning the ambition of the club.
The next ten days are crucial for Liverpool and if
they see Coutinho join Barcelona and no big
names arrivals, then the concerns of the
supporters will reach boiling point.