Wirtz to Liverpool sets transfer dominoes in motion

Florian Wirtz’s £116m move to Liverpool is expected to be completed on Friday, according to… well, everyone. But here’s a link to one news story so you know I’m not lying. It’ll break the club’s record transfer fee, and it’s tough to know if any player is ever going to be worth that kind of money. But as we wrote earlier in the window, Wirtz is definitely good enough to justify a 9-figure fee, and I doubt Liverpool will end up having any buyer’s remorse.

Going the other way is Jarell Quansah, and I think there’s a bit of PSR maneuvering on Liverpool’s part. The reported fee is £30m plus add-ons, which is a massive overpay for someone of this statistical profile and low number of minutes.

I’m guessing that Liverpool was willing to add a little extra to the Wirtz fee — which they get to spread out over 5 years for accounting purposes — in exchange for Leverkusen bumping up the Quansah fee by the same amount. They get to book that as immediate profit, which gives them some more flexibility this summer.

Fab says they’ll look to replace Quansah with Marc Guehi, who Liverpool were reportedly interested in last summer before being put off by the price. Personally, I would still be put off by the price. I think that Guehi is a good player who could do a solid job for Liverpool, but he doesn’t have any standout aspect of his game that I’d want to pay £70m for. I’m curious to hear about other potential options they’re looking into over the next couple of weeks.

And as Fab mentioned, and has been mentioned in this newsletter previously, Palace are interested in signing Sporting Lisbon defender Ousmane Diomande if someone meets their asking price for Guehi. He’s quite a different profile of player — much better in the air than Guehi, much worse of a passer, and doesn’t have anywhere near the ball winning volume or value.

Diomande’s agent would apparently like Palace to know that all of Real Madrid, Newcastle and Chelsea are interested. This translates to: You better not screw around on our wage and agent fee demands.

In any event, the Wirtz-Quansah deal should get Liverpool moving on other fronts, which should end several staring contests around the transfer market.

More transfer rumours

• Not exactly related but slightly related to the above: Napoli have reportedly upped their interest in Darwin Núñez, and if they can get that deal done, Liverpool could break their transfer record again with a bid for Alexander Isak. I remain skeptical that Liverpool can get enough for Darwin this window to justify another £100m+ purchase, or that Newcastle will let Isak go for any amount of money this window.

• Napoli apparently love buying from the Premier League, because they’ve bid €30m for Brighton’s Matt O’Riley.

• The Martin Zubimendi saga should finally come to an end soon, he’s arrived in London to finalize his deal with Arsenal.

• Chelsea appear to be on the lookout for some box-crashing 10/false 9 type options, with Morgan Rogers and Joao Pedro both linked today. I imagine that’s very much an either-or situation, and they wouldn’t sign both.

• Fulham rejected a £32m offer from Leeds for Rodrigo Muniz, which makes me wonder why they don’t start Rodrigo Muniz in most games.

• Everton seems to think they can get Jarrad Branthwaite to sign a big extension instead of pushing for a transfer or running down his contract, and honestly Toffees, love that for you.

• Everton, Spurs and 2 other clubs who go to a different school so you wouldn’t know them have apparently asked about Juventus and USA forward Tim Weah. He’s not getting a ton of playing time there and has been occasionally asked to play wingback when he does get on the pitch, so I’m sure he’d love to leave. And speaking of things I’d love for the Toffees, a Weah loan-to-buy would make a lot of sense.

• Bournemouth appear to be close to selling Ilya Zabarnyi to Paris Saint-Germain for around €60m. Has anyone ever sold both members of their starting CB partnership for €120m in the same window?

• Wolves have signed Fer Lopez from Celta Vigo for about £20m, which seems like a risky but potentially high upside move. The 21-year-old is a left-footed right winger who spent the first half of last season either on the training table or in the B team rehabbing from injury. He ended the season with just 759 La Liga minutes, but he was really good in those minutes.

—KM

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