Report: Liverpool in four-way battle for Serie A maestro as FSG eye up ‘strategic opportunity’ | OneFootball

According to reports from Spain, Liverpool are among four Premier League clubs keeping close tabs on a Serie A midfielder.

With the January transfer window now just over a fortnight away, the rumour mill is beginning to accelerate with increasing vigour, and the Anfield hierarchy coud well seek to pounce upon their month-long mid-season opportunity to reinforce Arne Slot’s squad.

Ongoing links with Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi continue to gain plenty of traction, although it seems that sporting director Richard Hughes may also be eyeing prospective recruitment in the middle of the park.

Liverpool ‘closely monitoring’ Davide Frattesi

On Monday night, Fichajes reported that Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur are all ‘closely monitoring’ Inter Milan midfielder Davide Frattesi and are ‘convinced’ that his current situation at the San Siro ‘presents a strategic opportunity’.

Anfield chiefs are seemingly conscious of the ‘heavy workload’ being placed upon the Reds’ current midfield options and feel that the 26-year-old would provide Slot with ‘depth, intensity and a highly valued tactical alternative’.

With the Nerazzurri unable to guarantee him regular game-time, they’re understood to be open to offers for the Italy international, so long as any prospective deal would be reflective of his market value.

(Photo by Angel Martinez/Getty Images)

Would Frattesi be an ideal market opportunity for Liverpool?

Frattesi has found game-time hard to come by under Cristian Chivu (just one Serie A start all season), and he was an unused substitute in Inter’s defeat to Liverpool last week, so it’s no great surprise that he’s now at the epicentre of exit rumours.

The 26-year-old boasts decent scoring returns for a midfielder, with 15 goals in 102 games for his club and eight in 33 caps for Italy, and the table below (using figures from FBref in comparison to positional peers in Europe’s five main leagues over the past year) illustrates his underlying attacking influence.

The reputable Football Transfers website lists his current market value at €39.3m (£34.5m), far from an astronomical amount for a Serie A title winner in his mid-20s at one of the top clubs in European football, and with two-and-a-half years remaining on his contract.

Frattesi’s surprising lack of game-time at Inter might indeed present a market opportunity for Liverpool to pounce, although the level of competition for midfield berths at Anfield would make it hard to guarantee him a starting place.

Slot is blessed with options in the middle of the park with Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai, Curtis Jones and (slightly further forward) Florian Wirtz. He also has Wataru Endo to call upon, although our number 3 is currently sidelined with injury.

We don’t doubt that the 26-year-old is a more than capable footballer, although FSG are likely to have more pressing priorities in the January transfer window, particularly in defence. Let’s put a pin in this one for now until such time that it’s corroborated by other sources closer to Merseyside.

You can watch Slot’s full post-Brighton press conference below, via Empire of the Kop on YouTube: