That's brilliant, genius €40m deal fixes crippling Liverpool fault

Liverpool have a developing crisis in their squad. A genius €40m deal should help them fix it, however.

Liverpool need homegrown players. They sold a bunch of them last summer without properly replacing them, Jeremie Frimpong aside.

Even this summer, we don’t know if Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott will stick around for the season. Both are heavily linked with exits and could soon depart - and that would make a bad situation worse.

Liverpool are essentially down to just one spot in their squad that’s open for a non-homegrown player. In other words, they can sign one more player not developed in England and then that’s that - no more.

Thus if Jones and Elliott did leave, Liverpool would have to find homegrown replacements. Then weigh in Joe Gomez’s contract expiring next summer and suddenly things look incredibly bad.

Getting around the issue isn’t easy. Homegrown players cost an absolute fortune, as seen with Morgan Rogers and Elliot Anderson both moving for over £115m this summer. You can’t just easily grab them.

But there is an interesting workaround. Liverpool tried it last summer, signing Giovanni Leoni from Parma knowing that he was young enough that he’d eventually qualify as homegrown.

Now they’re attempting to repeat the trick by signing 18-year-old Ibrahim Mbaye from Paris Saint-Germain. Fabrice Hawkins is among those claiming a €40m deal is on the cards for the teenager and that talks are imminent.

Even better, Mbaye wants the move to Liverpool and would pick them over Bayer Leverkusen. That’s a massive win for the Reds - and one that could secure them a ‘homegrown’ player a few years in advance.

And for far, far under that £115m price range.