Liverpool free transfer for £63m Bayern Munich man makes sense as Jürgen Klopp on ‘red alert’
Liverpool have only just signed one winger in Luis Díaz, who arrived for a fee of £49m, but it has not taken them long to get linked with a move for another one.
A contract ‘stand-off’ with Bayern Munich has seen Serge Gnabry put into the conversation for a move to Liverpool, with the Reds and Manchester United both said to be on ‘red alert’ for the player.
At the end of this season, Gnabry will have been at Bayern for four years. Since leaving Arsenal and being deemed not good enough for West Brom by Tony Pulis, he has netted 59 goals in 154 games for the Bundesliga side, provided 44 assists, and helped them win three Bundesliga titles, two DFB-Pokals and the Champions League.
This season, only Robert Lewandowski has scored more than Gnabry’s 12 for Bayern and the winger is still only 26.
Yet so far, Bayern Munich have not been able to agree a new contract, and with 18 months left on his current deal (the same amount as Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino), Sky Germany are reporting that some of the top clubs around Europe are circling.
As well as Liverpool and Manchester United, Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona are also said to be waiting in the wings to pounce if they do not tie Gnabry down to an extension before the end of the campaign.
«I would wish for nothing more than that he would extend,» Bayern Munich manager Julian Nagelsmann recently said about Gnabry’s contract situation.
The player, valued at £63m by Transfermarkt, is said to be demanding similar terms to Bayern’s other wingers, Kingsley Coman and Leroy Sané, to stay, with the pair reportedly earning around £200,000-per-week, which would be within Liverpool’s price range.
Replacing Sadio Mané, say, with Gnabry in the summer of 2023, when both players would be able to move on for no transfer fee, could make a lot of sense for Liverpool and lessen the blow of losing the Senegalese.
By then, he would be just about to turn 28, while Mané will be a few months into being 31.
Clearly, planning that far ahead is difficult and much could change between now and the summer after next, but there will be cost-effective ways of continuing the succession plan within the Liverpool attack, and Gnabry proves it.
Either this summer or the one after, he could be available, and as a younger winger who still has something to prove in English football, he could well fit the bill.