Former scout urges Liverpool to sign ‘high level’ Premier League star | OneFootball

Liverpool Urged to Make Move to Sign Premier League Star

With Liverpool manager Arne Slot guiding the club into 2026 as reigning Premier League champions, attention has naturally turned to how the league winners might reinforce a side that already delivered domestic dominance in 2024/25, claiming the title in Slot’s first season in charge.

The window technically opened with an exit. Young defender James Norris departed Anfield to join Shelbourne for an undisclosed fee, following academy graduate James Norris out of the club’s long-term plans. Liverpool also saw James Norris leave for Shelbourne for an undisclosed transfer fee, trimming squad numbers at the back end of the roster before any major business took place.

Arne Slot’s Defensive Rebuild

Liverpool’s first incoming signing of 2026 looks close to completion. Joel Ordonez, the 21-year-old Club Brugge centre-back, is reportedly ‘one signature away’ from joining Slot’s champions. The Ecuador international already has 14 caps for his country, and arrives with the profile of a modern centre-back, composed, technical, and internationally experienced.

Ordonez is a natural centre-back, and his arrival, factoring in the injured Joe Gomez and Giovanni Leoni, would take Liverpool’s senior centre-back options to five. On paper, that would appear to cool immediate speculation around another defender arriving this month, but the transfer window rarely obeys neat arithmetic or obvious logic.

Liverpool and Marc Guehi: Opportunity or Overcrowding?

Speculation linking Liverpool with Crystal Palace’s Marc Guehi has simmered for multiple windows, but the conversation has gathered fresh energy in 2026. Patrick Montgomery, who was Liverpool’s Head Scout until 2024, believes the signing would still carry strategic merit, even if the numbers at centre-back seem healthy.

Speaking to The Breakdown, Montgomery said: “I think to be honest, he’s definitely improved. I think he’s been somebody that’s taken a step away from one of the bigger clubs that he’s come through the youth system of.

“He’s obviously become now an internationally recognized player. Somebody that I think when teams look at him, he’s Premier League proven.

“He’s played a lot of games now at a very high level. I think he’s shown what his attributes are, and I think for a club like Liverpool, for any of the bigger clubs, he’d be a very interesting prospect to bring in.” 

Those quotes underline Guehi’s appeal: youth system pedigree, a calculated step sideways to accelerate his development, international recognition, and crucially, Premier League proof points earned across heavy minutes at elite level. That blend of tactical maturity and growth runway explains why Liverpool could still explore a deal that might look like surplus on a whiteboard, but feels like succession planning in practice.