If a genie in a bottle offered three wishes to Liverpool fans right now, one of them would probably be that Trent Alexander-Arnold would sign a new long-term contract post-haste.
The Reds’ vice-captain is into the final year of his current deal at Anfield, and there has been much speculation throughout the summer over a possible move to Real Madrid.
Speaking on Football Insider’s Inside Track podcast, Keith Wyness claimed that an offer in the region of £25m-£30m would be ‘fair’ for the 25-year-old given his contract situation, although he reckons that the club would sooner let him run down his deal and have him for this season than sell him now.
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The former Everton CEO said: “The question is – do you take the hit on a player like Trent? He can sign pre-contracts in January. Do you take the hit with one year left? What are they going to get for him?
“Personally, I think there will be a move made and he will go. £25-30million would be a fair offer with one year left; do you take the hit and accept that as a cost for him playing one last season? That’s the sort of thing Liverpool will be looking at.
“It’s a transition season, and it could be worth a lot to keep him and forgo the transfer fee just to have him in the squad. It’s a very interesting way to look at it. If they challenge for the league or get into the Champions League, it could be sustainable.”
If you were drinking something while reading those quotes, we suspect you might have spat it out in a state of incredulity.
With all due respect to Wyness, does he seriously believe that Liverpool would only be able to command £25m-£30m for Trent this month, even if he’s in the final year of his contract? A player of his ability could justifiably fetch at least twice that amount (probably more) in any circumstances.
On the face of it, selling a player for £30m is preferable to letting him leave for nothing, but of course we’d much rather have the vice-captain at Anfield for at least one more season than selling him now.
The obvious hope is that the club’s hierarchy will convince the 25-year-old to sign a new long-term deal soon, so that all this discourse over his future will finally be put to rest, along with the nerves of Reds supporters who must be wondering how on Earth his contract has been left to run this close to expiry.
Surely Richard Hughes and co must be making some progress in the background regarding Trent’s future, as Sky Sports’ Dharmesh Sheth has suggested. You’d certainly hope so, anyway.