Liverpool's Summer Transfer Strategy: Focus on Wide Attackers
Liverpool’s transfer plan this summer has been blunt and unapologetic: restore one-v-one menace out wide.
Mohamed Salah’s departure on a free ripped a hole in the right side of Liverpool’s attack, and despite the parade and the title, that gap still glares. The club know it. The market knows it.
Victor Muñoz’s £34 million arrival from Osasuna, after Liverpool triggered the Spain World Cup winner’s clause, is a start, not a solution. Richard Hughes has landed a winger with pedigree and personality, but the recruitment drive out wide is only just getting going.
Liverpool push for Barcola and Minteh
Two more wide forwards are firmly in Liverpool’s sights.
Bradley Barcola has sat at the top of their list ever since a move for Yan Diomande slipped away. The 23-year-old has the profile Liverpool want, but Paris Saint-Germain are making sure any deal hurts. Their starting price: £145 million. That is the kind of figure that stops negotiations dead or forces a club into major sacrifices elsewhere.
At the same time, the newly crowned 2024/25 Premier League champions have opened talks for Brighton’s Yankuba Minteh. Liverpool have already tested the Seagulls’ resolve with two offers, one at £50 million and another at £60 million. Brighton’s stance is clear: £70 million or he stays.
If those valuations hold, Liverpool will need to sell.
And one name keeps coming up.
Gakpo lined up for Spurs move
Cody Gakpo, on £250,000 per week at Anfield, is increasingly being positioned as the player who could be cashed in. A fee of around £72 million has been floated for a move to Tottenham.
At 27, Gakpo fits perfectly into Roberto De Zerbi’s attacking blueprint. The Spurs head coach is in the middle of a sweeping rebuild of his frontline, and Gakpo has been on his radar for the long term.
Two pieces of that new-look attack are already in place. Manchester City pair Savinho and Omar Marmoush are set to line up for Spurs this season, with Marmoush expected to operate through the middle. Gakpo, in that context, becomes the final wide piece De Zerbi wants.
Transfer specialist Fabrizio Romano now believes the deal is close.
“Tottenham are working on it”
“Don’t forget Cody Gakpo, because Savinho is going to Tottenham in London for medical tests and contract signing,” Romano told his YouTube audience.
“Omar Marmoush is expected to go to Tottenham as a centre striker, and he’s a target that is probably going to happen in the next days, as I told you.
“But I told you always: right winger, left winger, centre striker. This was what I told you about Tottenham. And for the left winger, the name remains Cody Gakpo.
“Tottenham are working on it. Tottenham are working on the player side. Player terms are not an issue. And then Tottenham remain absolutely on it on the club side with Liverpool.
“So, Gakpo to Tottenham could be over in the next days if the total deal can be agreed.”
From title winner to expendable?
Gakpo joined Liverpool from PSV in January 2023 and played a strong part in the club’s 2024/25 Premier League title-winning campaign. He looked settled, versatile, useful across the frontline.
Last season was different. The Netherlands international struggled to convince, and a section of the fanbase grew louder in their calls for an upgrade in his position.
Liverpool’s recruitment drive backs that sentiment up. If the club can strike a deal for Barcola, he is expected to take Gakpo’s place in the squad hierarchy on the left, with Andoni Iraola also able to call on Rio Ngumoha and Muñoz for that flank.
So Liverpool stand at a familiar crossroads: sell a popular, if inconsistent, attacker to fund the next wave of wide threats, or hold their nerve and risk missing out on their primary targets.
If Tottenham and Liverpool can find common ground on that £72 million, the answer may arrive within days.
