Barcelona have not given up their hopes of signing Philippe Coutinho according to the Liverpool Echo. Even though we rejected their initial bid of £72million for the 25-year-old last week, the Catalan giants are willing to spend more to bring the talented Brazilian to the Camp Nou.

While Coutinho was certainly our best player last season, Barcelona want him to team up with Neymar and are willing to try every trick in the book to sign the Brazilian. They did sign Luis Suarez from us a few years back and that had a pretty big effect on our team, something that Jurgen Klopp desperately wants to avoid this time around.

Coutinho only signed a new contract in January, worth £150,000 per week and there is no release clause. That certainly puts the future of the 25-year-old in our favour as we can ask for any amount that we deem fit.

That could be a tactic taken to scare Barcelona from bidding for the Brazilian. However, the president of the Catalan side, Josep Bartomeu stated recently that more players would be coming in and even spoke about Coutinho. But he didn’t deny that they were moving for the former Inter Milan man. As quoted by Liverpool Echo, he said:

“He’s a Liverpool player and I have a lot of respect for Liverpool, which we do in the summer is to be very discreet about everything, so we can not confirm or deny anything.

“There will be more players (coming in), one in the middle, sure.”

Barcelona have problems of their own as Neymar has been heavily linked with a record breaking move to Paris Saint-Germain. The Brazilian striker could be tempted to stay should Coutinho join him as they are close friends but we have to be adamant and ensure that our little magician does not end up playing for Barca next season.

We are in the process of building a team that will get better with each season but losing out on our best players for years has always put us behind in our plans. Luis Suarez was just one example in recent seasons while we have also seen the likes of Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano leave us while they were in their prime.

Coutinho is in a similar position at the moment and we cannot, under any circumstance, lose him to Barcelona. We have Champions League football on the horizon and qualifying for that has to be the most important mini goal at the start of the season; something we should achieve with Coutinho in the team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUH3PDwq8E4