Rumour Mongering: Mata, Aguero, Diego, and the Usual Suspects

By: Noel | May 24th, 2011

It’s that time of year. A time for rumour mongering and acres of fresh effluvium churned out hourly. It can’t be avoided. We’ll try to make this something less than entirely painful:

Sergio Aguero

“I said long ago that when I wanted to go, I would say so publicly,” said Aguero in a statement on his website. “And the time has come. So I keep to my word and here I am. I find it hard to leave Atlético. It hurts and saddens me.”

It will hurt and sadden Atletico fans, too, after the player signed a contract extension and officially became the club’s vice-captain in January. He now says it was only ever intended to get a club he has real feeling for get a better fee when he did leave, and combined with the early request from a player who’s still only 22 years old and who just about everybody assumed would be heading elsewhere sooner rather than later, perhaps there’s some truth to that. There won’t be if he ends up with frontrunners Real Madrid, of course—that would be like Jack Rodwell heading to Liverpool from Everton. But for now, let the bidding begin, as every Champions League (and aspiring Champions League) club in Europe seems in the running for the Argentinean.

Wherever he does go, he will likely cost at least 45-million Euros—and it could be a lot more if Atletico considers the bid hostile and refuses to let him go. The chances are he won’t be coming to Liverpool, but rest assured that until he goes somewhere else he’ll be linked to Liverpool by some source or other on a near daily basis. As for where he is likely to go, write down all the usual suspects bar Barcelona on cards and put them in a hat, because that’s about as close as you’re going to get to insider knowledge at this stage.

Diego

This one’s out of nowhere, but the latest rumours that do strongly involve Liverpool involve the Brazilian attacking midfielder who currently plies his trade with Wolfsburg. For those disturbed by the thought of Charlie Adam kicking off next season in Liverpool red, this is a very good rumour if for no other reason than if it happened, it would almost certainly kill off the Adam rumours.

Brad Friedel

Proving once again that goalkeepers are a different breed in football, the 40-year-old American stopper who just wrapped up his 400th appearance in the Premier League by defeating Liverpool on Sunday is out of contract and looking for a change of scenery. A little oddly, most outlets consider Liverpool to be among the frontrunners along with Spurs and West Brom to get him. Given that Pepe Reina’s now sticking around—and that even if he wasn’t Liverpool wouldn’t be looking to Friedel as a long term solution—it seems odd to see Liverpool in the mix, as it’s one place he almost certainly wouldn’t even have a chance to start at outside of the League Cup. You can blame it on nostalgia by the former Liverpool keeper if you want, but any way you slice it, apparently Liverpool’s first signing of the summer could be a very unexpected one who comes in on a free and will be lucky to get a couple of hours of game-time next year if he does.

Juan Mata

And just like that, another new name to add to the pot. While Mata (pictured above) has been linked to Liverpool in the past, he hasn’t been in the past year or two. If you believe Guillem Balague’s Spanish sources, however, it would appear the left footed wide attacker is set to move to the north of England this summer:

After a very interesting trip to Valencia, a clearer picture of the finances and futures of the stars at the club have emerged. Valencia still has to service debts in the region of €500 milion. It is manageable as long as the team qualifies for the Champions League, but even when they do, they will still need to produce and re-pay around €20-25 milion in interest and debt: and the easiest way to do that is to sell players. Basically, that means everybody at Valencia is for sale, including Juan Mata. If a club comes in with a bid of 25-30 milion for Mata, Valencia are willing to sell, but nobody has lodged a bid with the club yet.

Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool have contacted Mata`s representative (his father) and the trio have all expressed varying degrees of interest in the player`s situation. Mata`s new contract contains a buy out clause of €60 million, but that will always be negotiable if both the player and the club are willing to listen to offers.

Apparently it is Liverpool and City who appear the most serious contenders, making this perhaps the most solidly sourced big-name rumour involving Liverpool as the silly season begins to take flight.

Eden Hazard

Arsenal were always considered favourites to land the Belgian starlet, but now rumours are that Hazard (at right) will stick with Lille for another season after winning the French league and with it the corresponding promise of Champions League Football somewhere he’s already comfortable. If this is true, it means he won’t be going anywhere this summer, which of course means we’ve got a couple of months of hearing about him maybe going somewhere—including maybe Liverpool—to look forward to.

The Usual Suspects

The aforementioned Charlie Adam, along with fellow January possibilities Charles N’Zogbia and Ashley Young, and long rumoured target Jose Enrique. Because Liverpool was linked to them before and so will of course be linked to them again, whether or not there’s any real new news. And so far, there doesn’t seem to be any real new news but their names are still being floated once again as likely possibilities.

Well, there you go. I think most will know that we here at the Liverpool Offside view the transfer window insanity skeptically at best, but it’s not as though we can bury our heads in the sand completely and pretend it doesn’t exist if we want to be your one-stop shop for all things Liverpool. That and there’s not a lot else to write about once the season wraps up. In any case, we’ll try to get it all in one place when we do talk about it, we’ll try to avoid grand “Sergio Aguero is coming to Liverpool”-style pronouncements, and we’ll try to keep a bit of our snarky disdain and skepticism regarding the whole thing.

Do let us know if you think we’re approaching things from the wrong direction so that we can try to do better.

Also, don’t forget that the results for Young Player of the Season went up on Oh You Beauty yesterday. Today Goal of the Season will be presented at the crack of dawn in the UK morning on Paisley Gates, and Performance of the Season will roll around about twelve hours later on Anfield Asylum. We’ll be presenting Worst Loss first thing tomorrow morning as our continuing efforts to band together with other Liverpool blogs and notable online fans to give the season a bit of a wraping-up continues.

Some Related Liverpool Posts:

Category: Miscellaneous, Premier League, Team News, Transfer News

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poorscouserbobby

and now for something completely different:
1) Aqua, sell him keep him? I say keep him useful in the attack. Good support for Gerrard/Raul
2) Brad Friedel... I could see him being very useful getting Reina a break here and there and maybe almost as a GK coach in seasons coming.
3) Mata/Young/Hazard/Deigo... I don't care who Liverpool bring, as long as they're good. The numbers have gone silly lately, sadly it won't go down. I think the owners understand the 'english' player aspect, and I think we'll have several good pick ups this season.. who they are we may not have even the slightest hint.
Mike

I'm surprised Scott Parker is nowhere listed....

Hazard will go the way of Dzeko or Afellay...he'll get bought by a mega-rich club then rot on the bench.
Ismael Jawad

"Do let us know if you think we’re approaching things from the wrong direction so that we can try to do better." Liverpool weren't exactly signing world class players on constant basis during transfer windows in recent times, so your skeptical approach is quite understandable.
Tom Foolery

True, keep it snarky.
Lfc4lifer

I'll admit this season Summer feels different with KK and the new owners coming....

But I remember last summer when we linked to every player under the sun, with the only real namer to sign being Our own messi, in Joe Cole :/

Having spent around £60m in jan I don't expect no major figure to be spent on any one player.. Fenway are yet to spend through fresh funds and I don't see them spending more than £30m out of there kitty and maybe another £10m through sales of Jova and Cole etc etc....

Enrique £10m
Nzogbia £8m
Young £12m
Adams £10m

These are neccessarily the players I want, but the players I think we will target and most likely to join.

Being a realist and realising the likes of messi or Aguero are unlikely to landing at at Anfield anytime too soon....

I would be content with these signings.
PDubz18

Young will cost at least 25m, he's English.
Lfc4lifer

With 1yr left on his contract that kind of fee would value him around £50m :/

Can't see anyone paying over £16m tops... But he's not worth more than £12m so close to the end of his contract.

Would rather go for robben or ribbery at that kind of cash!
Steven

This is a joke again! Liverpool will not bring any caliber of these players to the club after finishing a miserable 6th place!
We needed at least 5th place and the last two games were sooooooo miserable i thought Woy was still here! It just goes to show we are way off the pace losing at home to Spurs and away to Villa!
Hate to say this as i wish we could snare Taiwo (AC Mlian), Coentrao (Real Madrid), Hazard (Lille)... I am sure Aguero will not come along with Mata who is being chased by Man City along with Sanchez... All great players! No offence to him, but i would not have purchased Carroll for that money! When he is in the side, we forget how to play football and only look for him! He really unbalances the side as shown v Spurs! :(
Lfc4lifer

Your so right regarding Carrol... Yes hes a perfect squad player those days when defences are hard to unlock and will give us something diffrent...

But you don't need to Einstine to realise that his presence on the pitch does not help our pass and move 1-2 touch style that we had successfully adopted of late.

I knew if he played against spurs we would struggle and struggle we did.

I need to know why when have smashed fulham 5-2 away we needed to change our team against spurs?

KK switched positions of flanno and johnson for no good reason, this after johnson had one of his best games for the club?

As for playing Carrol when not needed, I guess he has 35million reasons why he did that the teams detriment!
paul

There is no WC looming for players to put themselves on display in the EuropeTV cup. I'm sure plenty of players will change clubs for nothing more glamorous than good old fashioned money.

It's not Carroll's fault the team loses the plot and resorts to Carrahoofs. Now that he's not injured, why not see what happens at the start of the season with a good pre-season under his belt? There's little we can do with him, he's on our books for some time now, so there's no point moaning about him. He will be played more often than not. I dreaded seeing him in the side, but he didn't play at Villa, and we were quite poor again. One save from their keeper was it?

Don't forget he'd already bagged 11 goals in the league before we got him, and he'd been out injured. Compare to Kuyt's 13 in the league, our top scorer, that's not bad. Maybe you need to see what he did against us to feel a little more positive about him?
Ismael Jawad

Couldn't have said it any better.
Red2death

Here's hoping there are sudden announcements that so-and-so has just been signed, before any of the rumour mills pick up on it.

I think Kenny and Clarke are much better in keeping deals within the boardroom, where they belong, until they're done and dusted. That'd be a huge change from Rafa, who allowed ample time for other clubs to jack up the prices on his targets (and time for H&G to disallow him from buying them).

Even Hodgson was better in that respect. At least he got Raul on the quiet. I'm sure given the time, he'd also be able to capture the next Carlton Cole and Paul Konchesky before any championship club even realized it.
Tom Foolery

You know things are heading in the right direction when we're linked more heavily with quality players coming in than quality players heading out. It used to be our world class players wanted out (Torres, Stevie, Masch, Pepe), and we were bringing in more deadweight. Now, quite the opposite seems to be occurring, which is nice.

Oh, and bring Emilliano back. We'll still need more reinforcements in defence, but the guy is more than capable of filling in holes (pssst, he'd be free too).
paul

We still have Aquaman, we're paying his wages again. We should see how he fits back into the squad. Unless he has a stinking attitude and upsets the players, why look for someone else in the middle unless we can get an absolutely top class player?
Tom Foolery

Yes, yes. Bring the Aqualung back, he'll fit in beautifully with the current squad...from the bench. I don't see him breaking the starting lineup immediately (with Raul, Lucas, and Gerrard the likely pairing), but he's got that killer instinct to open up a defence if we are up against the fudge-packers of the league. He's also quite versatile in the middle of the park. capable of filling in the deeper role for Lucas, good from a slightly wider position, and the more cetrally advanced roles (the latter two filled in by Raul and Gerrard).

But, like you say: If he's gonna mope about, don't bother (however I don't recall any of that from two seasons ago...unless you consider being injured moping).

However, if the other option is Adam...
...well, fuck Charlie Adam actually.
sarah

Personally, I think there's no way we're signing Aguero. Juan Mata, however, I think would be a good buy.
Zach

If I had to kill someone for us to get Aguero... I'm not saying I would kill them, but I might.
Lfc4lifer

Would be killer signing for sure... ;)
Ravenilli

If Liverpool bring back Brad Friedel I will be very surprised wouldn't be the worst signing ever made but with Liverpool trying to build a young team I would be very surprised indeed.

For Jose Enrique and Charlie Adam if either of them are brought in by KK and Damian Carmoli I will be very disappointed as neither of the two would be better players and what we already have available at the club.
Khaine

I'm bitter about the Diego rumours going silent. Even coming off a, by his standards, shit season (incidentally, with the same amount of goals and assists as Hazard), he just radiates class. Has one of the best set piece right pegs in europe, and with tons of movement, vision, tricks and venom in the final third, I would absolutely love seeing him in red. Also, even though he's been around forever, he's still younger than Aqua.
Lfc4lifer

I think you've just given us plenty reasons for why won't be getting him... Unfortunately :/
Bertrand

Hes playing at Wolfsburg..hardly a bigger club than LFC.
Lfc4lifer

Agreed, but the problem is Chelsea have now joined the race for him and it seems the asking price doubled.. That was the point I was trying to make.