Neil Jones continues to back Liverpool in the market when it comes to the possible acquisition of Jude Bellingham in the summer.
The potential impact of the club’s woes this season is worth considering, of course, although Anfield remains an attractive prospect for a player of the caliber of a 19-year-old.
“Liverpool needs to get back to the image of being an upwardly mobile club,” the GOAL reporter told Redmen TV for their Journo Insight programme.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to say that the last five months have shattered everything of the last five years, but it’s definitely produced some cracks in the armory.
“Last summer, if you said to Jude Bellingham (and Dortmund were willing to sell) ‘do you fancy it?’ he would say ‘yeah, he almost won it all. Let’s go again, I’ll be the difference’. Now it’s like ‘can you come back to pick us up?’
“There has to be a compelling argument for Liverpool to explain that it’s down to some serious injuries and a couple of bad decisions, but they’re going to do this, this and this and do it again.
“I don’t think that is beyond the possibilities of Liverpool, they still have Klopp and very good players.”
The Merseysiders are currently facing a likely scenario where three of their current generation of midfielders – Naby Keita, James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – leave in the summer due to expiring contracts.
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As such, it’s clear that (as undeniably excellent as Bellingham is) it’s about numbers for Liverpool as much as quality.
In that sense, we have to make sure that we get more than English walking through the door when the summer window opens, if not to have new options to choose from, but also to protect our young stars from more than — dependence.
Whether such hopes will be realized remains to be seen and they may very well depend on our qualifying first for the Champions League next term.
A new contract for Stefan Bajcetic shows a continued commitment to the youth at L4; hopefully a couple of younger additions in the future will further cement that commitment.
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