Report: Liverpool prepared to offload any of four players to try and clinch club-record transfer | OneFootball

Liverpool could reportedly be prepared to shatter their record transfer fee during the summer, and it’s possible that some current players could be sacrificed in order to make it happen.

Among the numerous rumoured targets on Richard Hughes’ radar, none is more prominent right now than Alexander Isak, who David Ornstein has described as a ‘top target‘ for the Reds amid his outstanding exploits at Newcastle.

A fresh report now suggests that the Anfield hierarchy are deadly serious about trying to recruit the 25-year-old aheas of next season.

Liverpool prepared to smash club record to sign Isak

According to TBR Football, Liverpool are reportedly confident of securing a deal to sign the Sweden international this summer and are willing to fork out a club-record sum to make it happen.

It’s claimed that Darwin Nunez is likely to be sold as part of the overall plans, corroborating a recent assertion from James Pearce, and he’s not the only Reds player who could be offloaded.

Some members of Arne Slot’s current squad may yet be offered to Newcastle as a sweetener to try and secure Isak’s signature, with Joe Gomez, Jarell Quansah, Harvey Elliott and Ben Doak all named as potential makeweights.

(Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Would a player-plus-cash deal make sense for Liverpool?

A player of Isak’s scoring prowess (58 goals in 100 matches for the Magpies) would undoubtedly enhance Liverpool’s starting XI, and many of his underlying statistics are also quite impressive.

As per FBref, he ranks among the top 10% of strikers in Europe’s five main leagues over the past year with his match averages for non-penalty goals (0.74) and xG (0.64), shot-creating actions, (3.42) progressive carries (2.88) and successful take-ons (1.63).

The most that LFC have paid outright for any one player is £75m for Virgil van Dijk, alhough the various add-ons for the deal which saw Nunez come to Anfield in 2022 could take his eventual fee to £85m. Either way, the Reds may need to exceed both of those figures in order to convince Newcastle to sell their prolific marksman.

Offering a player in exchange might increase the likelihood of Isak being signed, while also making less of a dent in the transfer budget, but the flip side is that Liverpool might then need to recruit in another area of their squad if someone like Quansah or Gomez has been offloaded.

Hughes would need to carefully evaluate the various pros and cons to a potential player-plus-cash transaction in the pursuit of Newcastle’s number 14, but recent history suggests that the Merseyside hierarchy don’t recklessly dive head-first into doing a deal before weighing it up comprehensively.