4 months ago
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Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/2024 AMA Sports Photo Agency
Newcastle United looked to sell Anthony Gordon to Liverpool to meet PSR requirements and may have unsettled their own player in the process.
In desperate need of making player sales before July 1st to adhere to the Premier League profit and sustainability rules, over the weekend Newcastle United had the bright idea of offering 23-year-old Liverpool-born winger Anthony Gordon to Liverpool.
When Liverpool raised their collective eyebrows at the asking price and flat-out rejected requests to include Jarell Quansah in the deal, Newcastle were able to complete quick sales of Yankuba Minteh to Brighton and then Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest to solve their financial predicament.
Which brings us to July 1st and Newcastle no longer having to consider selling Anthony Gordon. There’s only one problem for them: the player, on record as a Liverpool fan despite graduating the Everton academy and with Steven Gerrard as his footballing hero, may have become unsettled.
Newcastle’s club-briefed press are rather amusingly framing it as Gordon having his “head turned by Liverpool interest” and claiming it was Liverpool proactively offering Quansah to try to get a deal done, which goes against earlier reports from Liverpool’s end.
Given Gordon pushed hard for his £40M move to Newcastle from Everton in January of 2023, making his desire to leave public and sitting out of training to force it through, maybe in retrospect entering into talks about a quick-fire sale to Liverpool was a bad idea for them all things considered.
Even if one believes it’s Liverpool’s briefings that were misleading and takes today’s Newcastle spin at face value, there is agreement serious negotiations took place and that Gordon for a time believed that he was certain to join Liverpool over the past 48 hours.
Newcastle may be able to patch things over with Gordon, and Liverpool may not actually need a new left winger depending on if Barcelona interest in Luis Diaz amounts to anything, but having effectively unsettled their own player it will be interesting to see if this is the end of the Gordon story.
