I've only just realised that Markovic didn't leave. It'll be interesting to see whether he gets a look in between now and January.
I'm aware we didn't have an offer accepted but it was widely reported when we were bidding that he wanted the move and also reported that his reason for rejecting Arsenal was because he wanted to join Liverpool. If he was willing to move to Liverpool then the idea that he rejected the Arsenal move simply because it was last minute doesn't stack up.
I think it's safe to say that he was being signed to replace Sanchez for Arsenal and it was only due to the Lemar deal not happening that the Sanchez deal fell through. As for Liverpool & Coutinho - I'm honestly not 100% sure. Even when bidding for Lemar we maintained our stance that Coutinho wasn't leaving under any circumstances. Going into deadline day we were being linked with moves for both VvD and Lemar, possibly costing £150m+ and would have took our net spend to around £200m for the window. We had money to spend this window after not spending anything last year but my gut feeling is that we wouldn't have signed both without Coutinho leaving.
Based on nothing more than a hunch, I think Liverpool went into the Lemar deal with the idea that if they could get him and end up with £x left over from the Coutinho sale (£70m for arguments sake) then they'd have done the deal. As soon as Lemar's fee started went from £60-70m to £90-100m, there wouldn't have been enough money left over to make the deal beneficial to Liverpool.
I'm aware we didn't have an offer accepted but it was widely reported when we were bidding that he wanted the move and also reported that his reason for rejecting Arsenal was because he wanted to join Liverpool. If he was willing to move to Liverpool then the idea that he rejected the Arsenal move simply because it was last minute doesn't stack up.
I think it's safe to say that he was being signed to replace Sanchez for Arsenal and it was only due to the Lemar deal not happening that the Sanchez deal fell through. As for Liverpool & Coutinho - I'm honestly not 100% sure. Even when bidding for Lemar we maintained our stance that Coutinho wasn't leaving under any circumstances. Going into deadline day we were being linked with moves for both VvD and Lemar, possibly costing £150m+ and would have took our net spend to around £200m for the window. We had money to spend this window after not spending anything last year but my gut feeling is that we wouldn't have signed both without Coutinho leaving.
Based on nothing more than a hunch, I think Liverpool went into the Lemar deal with the idea that if they could get him and end up with £x left over from the Coutinho sale (£70m for arguments sake) then they'd have done the deal. As soon as Lemar's fee started went from £60-70m to £90-100m, there wouldn't have been enough money left over to make the deal beneficial to Liverpool.
