According to reports from France, Liverpool have been offered a player from a fellow ‘big 6’ Premier League club in the final week of the summer transfer window.
Sources contacted by Get French Football News have indicated that Albert Sambi Lokonga has been offered to the Reds by his representatives, despite the Merseyside club appearing to have no plans on pursuing the Arsenal midfielder.
The £50,000-per-week Belgium international (Capology) has yet to feature for the Gunners this season and spent some of the 2022/23 campaign on loan at Crystal Palace.
Although Sambi Lokonga’s former teammate Cheick Doucoure appears to be Liverpool’s main midfield target from within the Premier League, with a contract offer reportedly sent to the Malian, the Arsenal man would at least give the Reds a defensive midfield alternative with English top-flight experience.
The Belgian is one of the best distributors of a football in Europe, ranking among the top 3% of positional peers in the continent’s five main leagues for passing accuracy over the past year with 90.3%, as per FBref.
However, he doesn’t even crack the top 40% of midfielders for most of the other qualities Jurgen Klopp would likely seek in a player of his position (FBref), and that may explain why the 23-year-old has fallen to the periphery at the Emirates Stadium.
Liverpool could still do with getting another defensive midfielder in at Anfield before Friday night’s deadline, but they must also be wary not to make a signing just for the sake of it.
The recruitment team need to weigh up whether Sambi Lokonga would add the requisite quality to the Reds’s squad, and it doesn’t seem from GFFN’s report that they’ve been desperate to get him through the door.
At best, he could be considered a last-minute option if the pursuit of Doucoure comes to nothing this week.
We need to more serious in this transfer by atleast buying quality players than gambling.