Rumour Mongering: Liverpool Battle Barcelona for €100M Bruno Guimarães

We’re about 99.7% sure Liverpool are being name-dropped to drive up the price on this one but sure, whatever, he’s a midfielder.

It’s time to add another one to the list in the Liverpool midfielder transfer target sweepstakes, as Newcastle and Brazil’s Bruno Guimarães today finds himself the latest name linked with a summer move to Merseyside.

However, savvy fans and watchers of the transfer market might find a couple of reasons for skepticism, with the claims first emerging from Spain’s AS and casting the Reds as competitors to Barcelona for his signature and due to his supposed cost.

Touching on the latter first, Newcaslte—currently ahead of the Reds in the top four race and with a game in hand—are said to only be open to dealing if somebody offers up a fee in the region of €100M (or £87M at current exchange rates).

That might seem like rather a lot of money for a defensive specialist who hasn’t previously been reliably linked with Liverpool and starts to edge into the territory that forces one to ask why they’d be open to paying it after signalling they couldn’t afford Jude Bellingham.

With Bellingham appearing to be edging closer to a move to Real Madrid, the answer there might be that the Reds have backed away from the England international less because of the fee Dortmund want and more because the player wants Madrid.

Still, in that case one has to wonder how they’d fare against Barcelona in a battle for a Brazil international at a newly oil-money-flush club currently favoured to qualify for the Champions League next season at Liverpool’s expense.

For the time being, then, we’re reading this as a case of Liverpool being cast as a contender for the player because, A) everyone knows they need midfielders and, B) Newcastle would like to drive up Guimarães’ price if Barca are in fact after him.

Still, once never does know for certain in the land of rumour mongering, and for those keeping track at home (or trying to) it’s one more potential target for Liverpool’s long-overdue midfield rebuild scheduled for the 2023 offseason.