If the sale of Andy Carroll to West Ham for £15 million goes well, Liverpool and Brendan Rodgers should have the funds to carry on with their signing spree this summer, hoping to secure the arrivals of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Luis Alberto, with Christian Atsu also seeming like an option to join the team at Anfield.
If anyone is still willing to pay so much money for Carroll, who’ll be remembered as the most expensive flop in history (£35 million!!!), then don’t count anything out from occurring in this world. As long as Carroll, who struggled with injury problems this season, gets cleared in the medical at Upton Park, Liverpool are finally free from a player Rodgers was trying to get rid of from the first moment.
What does Rodgers like? Smart, quick on their feet, quick with their mind, and good passers kind of players. That’s why he bought Philippe Coutinho in January, and that’s why it seems all the players Liverpool are looking at this summer are very similar to one another, with a tendency to play on the left wing or at least float there, like the only confirmed deal so far, Iago Aspas from Celta.
But Liverpool have more they want to complete before the next season begins, regardless of whether Luis Suarez stays or not. The biggest name is Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who’ll probably cost £20-25 million, as Shakhtar players never come cheaply. The Armenian attacking midfielder led the Ukrainian league with 25 league goals last season, and his arrival should be a meaningful boost to a team striving to return to the top next season, although even a top 6 finish would be welcomed gladly.
Luis Alberto of Sevilla, a more traditional left winger (and much cheaper player) doesn’t have the resume Mkhitaryan has, but he had a fantastic season for Barcelona B and his inclusion in the U-20 World cup squad for the Spaniards undoubtedly shows they have big plans for him, and so should Liverpool, who probably need to add a million or two in order to finally convince Sevilla to fork over the goods.
Atsu, another winger who was brought up earlier in the summer, hasn’t featured much for Porto over the last couple of seasons, but the 21 year old is one of the more exciting young talents coming from Africa, already appearing 16 times for the Ghanian national team, and if Liverpool will still have some money left after the two players above are signed, Atsu will be the next name on the list.