‘Expect him to leave’… £25m player unlikely to be at Liverpool next season

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Liverpool are set to lose one of their most experienced players at the end of the season.

The Reds currently have a nice balance between effervescent youth and older, wiser heads within the squad. One of the oldest and wisest is Thiago Alcantara, who has just about seen it all over a 15-year career.

What Thiago hasn’t seen though, is minutes on the pitch this season. The 32-year-old is reportedly closing in on a return, but is yet to play at all in 2023/24.

And according to journalist James Pearce, Thiago is now ‘fully expected’ to make his Anfield exit during the summer. Speaking on the ‘Walk On’ podcast yesterday, Pearce said that while Jurgen Klopp was still hopeful of Thiago returning this season, it will very likely be his last at Liverpool regardless.

“He’s [Klopp] got Bajcetic to come back in, he’s got Thiago to hopefully play some part in the coming months,” explained the journalist, while putting to bed talk of a new midfield signing. “Obviously, fully except Thiago to leave when his contract expires in the summer.

“Obviously, we know that Endo isn’t going to be a Liverpool player for four, five, six years, I don’t think that’s going to be the case. But there’s certainly no kind of urgency to recruit a new number six because Klopp seems pretty happy with what he’s got in that department.”

Thiago unlikely to extend Liverpool stay

Ask many Liverpool fans, and they’ll tell you that this is an absolute no-brainer. Although he hasn’t played since last April, Thiago is still one of the highest earners in the squad.

You simply can’t have a player sitting around eating up the wage bill while not contributing. Liverpool run a tight ship as it is salary-wise and the Spaniard is currently a black hole where that is concerned.

But at the same time, it feels like we’re owed a year of watching Thiago Alcantara play football.

On his day, the former Barcelona youth-teamer is a quite brilliant footballer. We haven’t seen that nearly enough over the past four years, but it would be a shame to let a player like that go.

If something could be agreed with Thiago on a pay-to-play basis or something like that, then we’d love to see him stay a little longer.

Obviously, that’s dependent on him getting fit this season. If he doesn’t play at all, then there’s no real justification for keeping him.

But you get the feeling that if Thiago can get on the pitch between now and May, then he can prove why Liverpool would be fools to let him depart.

Should he go, you’d imagine the £25m signing from Bayern Munich wouldn’t be short of takers. There were claims as recently as yesterday that Steven Gerrard’s Al Ettifaq are lining up a move for Liverpool’s No.6. The smart money says that if they get him, it’ll be on a free transfer.