While Liverpool are in the middle of their preseason tour and Gaston Ramirez is playing for Uruguay in the Olympic Games’ football tournament, the two sides are still in touch and it seems that the English club will be making an offer very soon for the 20 year-old winger.
If there’s one position Liverpool fans have been looking to see upgraded is at the winger position, hopefully one with a bit more one on one skills than the crop previously offered. Stewart Downing’s £20 million arrival from Aston Villa didn’t really offer any improvement, failing to score a single goal during his debut season for the club.
Ramirez, a speedy winger who has played for Bologna for the last couple of seasons, has scored 12 goals in 57 appearances for the club since arriving from Danubio, and will probably be costing Liverpool €20 million to pry him away from the Serie A club.
Ramirez has also made 9 appearances for the the Uruguayan senior team, making his debut in 2010 friendly. From Liverpool’s 0-0 draw with Tottenham, it’s clear that Liverpool need some upgrading offensively. While Brendan Rodgers seems to be hinting more and more that Andy Carroll might not be sold, maybe so he can get a bit more money for the striker, the addition of Fabio Borini is clearly not enough to answer the high aspirations of the club’s owners and its fans.
Clint Dempsey, another transfer target of Liverpool this summer, if the rumors are to believed, is probably not going to arrive, seeing as Fulham have declared that the attacking midfielder NOT FOR SALE. Whether that means they just want a better price for the American, who’s 29 and might not be worth an 8 digit offer for much longer, or maybe Martin Jol actually thinks he won’t find a better player at that position; He’s probably right.
Ramirez isn’t the big name a lot of Liverpool fans would like to add to their roster, but it seems Liverpool are no longer a club capable of attracting that kind of star quality unless they spend a lot of cash their owners aren’t willing to fork. Last season’s failures in the transfer market have added a cautious kind of approach in the 2012 summer.
Gaston Ramirez is semi-proven, in a weaker league for a relatively small club. The big price is for the potential, and for his young age. At this point, Liverpool don’t have a choice but to make another expensive gamble.