The ‘Gelson Martins to Liverpool’ saga has received another twist in the tale as A Bola, via the Sport Witness, claims that only the Merseyside club has approached Sporting Lisbon for the 22-year-old winger.
This does read as a ‘come and get me plea’ as Martins was linked with a move to us during the entire Mohamed Salah transfer process. The Egyptian did eventually sign for us but when reports surfaced that Roma and we weren’t able to agree on a fee, Martins was considered as the player to solve our problems.
The Portuguese attacker scored 6 times and provided 9 assists in 32 league games for Sporting and the report from A Bola (via Sport Witness) claims that we bid twice for the 22-year-old.
The second bid reached the figure of €50million but Sporting rejected that as they were keen on selling Martins for the release clause of €60million, which does seem a little excessive for a player that didn’t light up the Portuguese league last season.
The report further adds that Jorge Jesus is worried about the player’s future and even called Martins up to tell him about the importance of staying at the club for another season at the least.
What is weird is the fact that we already have a number of players who can start out wide and with Salah also joining us, the need for another winger is minimal.
This could all be a ploy by the player or the agent to get more traction or engineer a move away from Sporting to a bigger club which is not in Portugal. There is no doubt that Martins is talented but he has to be more consistent in his performances, and be the one to dominate the Portuguese league.
At the moment, we have a bigger fish to fry and signing the likes of Virgil van Dijk or Naby Keita should be on top of the priority list. Martins is a luxury buy which we don’t need at the moment and if he does move to Liverpool, it will be a major surprise for everyone.
It is hard to imagine as to how Klopp would use him and all in all, the move doesn’t look feasible.
