Liverpool ready to repeat Darwin Nunez trick on Florian Wirtz as record signing hangs in the balance

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Liverpool are moving on four fronts in the transfer market as they aim to tie up some big deals early on this summer.

The Reds are aiming to build on their unexpected Premier League title-winning campaign and have set aside funds to improve the team in the off-season.

So far, that has resulted in some extremely exciting deals being readied. Jeremie Frimpong is set to be announced on Sunday, while talks continue with Bournemouth over Milos Kerkez.

In the meantime, reports on Thursday suggest Liverpool are concretely interested in Hugo Ekitike as they look to add a prolific number nine to their squad.

But while all three of these potential additions are capturing the imagination of Liverpool supporters, none are quite as exciting as a record deal to sign Florian Wirtz.

Liverpool are pushing to get Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen after the German international signalled a desire to move to Anfield last week. And as negotiations continue, an update on the direction of travel has been issued.

Liverpool looking to structure record Florian Wirtz deal

With Liverpool having convinced Wirtz to reject Bayern Munich and Manchester City in order to join them, half of this battle has already been won.

The other 50 per cent is set to be the expensive bit, with Leverkusen said to be holding out for a fee in excess of £125m to sell their star player.

Given the size of the deal, the negotiations were always likely to take some time. So, with supporters starting to get worried that things may fall through, the Liverpool ECHO have provided the latest on the deal.

They claim that Liverpool are still confident of securing Wirtz in a move which would make him the club’s all-time record signing.

READ MORE: How Liverpool could line up with Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz as Arne Slot tweaks Man City blueprint

The Reds have reportedly been in conversation with Leverkusen for a number of weeks, with the deal to sign Frimpong said to have ‘smoothed the path’ for talks over Wirtz.

Frimpong’s transfer is claimed to be ‘further along’ than his teammate’s, but Liverpool are still said to want a transfer ‘sooner rather than later’ for Wirtz as well.

Because of the size of the fee involved, there is claimed to be an acceptance that negotiations are not going to be a quick affair. And although Liverpool reportedly know they’ll have to smash their transfer record to get Wirtz, they are said to be interested in a ‘similarly structured negotiation’ to the one which took Darwin Nunez to Anfield in 2022.

Liverpool paid Benfica an initial £64m to sign Nunez, while agreeing to a further £21m to be paid in performance-related add-ons. Although the numbers will be bigger for Wirtz, it’s claimed that something similar may be in the works.

When will the Wirtz deal be done?

It is only natural that the longer these negotiations go on, the more anxious Liverpool supporters will become. However, it does not seem as though there is any real need to worry.

It has only been one week since news broke that Wirtz favoured a move to Liverpool. That is not a long time to get a deal of this size through.

All parties are seemingly clear that the player wants only Liverpool, and with his valuation more or less public, surely the only work to be done is on the structure of the fee.

Clearly, Leverkusen want their money and Liverpool will want to bring down the base fee as much as possible.

But it benefits no one to keep this dragging on. So, with Wirtz set to join up with the Germany national team on June 4th, it feels probable that an agreement will be reached before this date.