Looks like plans for the summer window are already being made at Anfield.
Although in this instance, it’s preparing for someone to leave rather than who we are possibly going to be bringing in.
According to a report from TEAMtalk, Jürgen Klopp has given Dejan Lovren permission to leave Anfield this summer, as a gesture of thanks for all that he has done for the club. Lovren’s contract doesn’t expire until the end of the 2020/21 season, so that means we’ll be able to get a fee for him, rather than letting him go for nothing like Adam Lallana and Nathaniel Clyne are expected to do.
And in my mind, there’s almost a sense of ‘good riddance’ to Lovren in light of this news. I never quite felt that Lovren was going to live up to the billing of when we first signed him, with Brendan Rodgers saying he could be the new Jamie Carragher. His string of errors in the coming years sort of proved that point, with his one redeeming feature being that goal against Borussia Dortmund back in 2016.
It was really the emergence of Virgil Van Dijk, the so-called ‘missing piece’ in Liverpool’s defence that has catapulted us to the level we are at now, going from a team that just missed out on trophies to conquering all of Europe, and in that sense, Lovren has just been a passenger along for the ride through all of this.
Overall, was Lovren a good player for Liverpool?
Yes
No
Even the likes of Joe Gomez and Joel Matip you could make the argument have had more of an impact on our rise in these past few years than Lovren did, arguably brought about because of the constant mistakes that Lovren was making necessitated the need for those two to come to the forefront.
So if and when he does move on, I hope that we can get a decent fee for him. He has a current value on Transfermarkt of £18m and if we can get anywhere near that mark, I think we’ll have done good business and we can use that money on other parts of the squad.