Saul deal could go down to the wire... Liverpool's hopes rest on Griezmann 🙏

Antoine Griezmann... you're our only hope

Should Saul Niguez end up pulling on Barcelona colours next season, Liverpool’s pursuit of a replacement for Georginio Wijnaldum is unlikely to come to an end.

The club’s list of prospective targets tends to be quite long, at least as far as prior reports have hinted at.

For now though, all our hopes of signing the 26-year-old appear to rest on one man and one man only: Antoine Griezmann.

Hear us out.

Speaking to Empire of the Kop, sports journalist Adrian Sanchez shared that there was still a possibility for Liverpool to carry out a move for Saul due to his former teammate’s discontentment at not being kept in the loop over a potential player swap deal with Atletico Madrid.

“The interest exists on the part of Liverpool, but in Spain they tell us that Saúl has not yet received a formal proposal,” the Mas Que Pelotas presenter revealed.

“I think that the operation could be carried out because Griezmann is very upset with FCBarcelona for making this negotiation behind his back.

“A meeting is expected this weekend with the representatives of both players to try to unblock the situation.”

We can certainly understand the Blaugrana forward’s reported unease given how controversial his initial switch to Catalonia in the summer of 2019 was.

But given that, according to Sanchez, we’ve yet to express our interest in Saul more concretely (i.e. with an actual bid), how reliant really are we on Griezmann?

Sooner or later, if we are to have any hope at all of luring the Spanish international over to Anfield, we’ll have to take our interest a step further.

Given our own financial concerns - far from being anywhere close on par to Barcelona’s - ‘later’, vague as that is, would appear to be the most likely point in time.

Those close to the club have repeatedly peddled the line that we’ll be reliant to a certain degree on outgoings this summer to afford further incomings beyond Ibrahima Konate.

Considering that our European rivals clearly didn’t get the same memo on financial prudence, Ronald Koeman’s men currently look the most likely to secure Saul’s signature; for whatever good that will do them considering the €200m debt they must first clear before registering new signings.

This brings us back to the man of the hour, and former Los Colchoneros favourite, Antoine Griezmann.

If all that’s standing in the way of a deal at the moment is the Frenchman, it potentially buys us enough time to get some of our deadwood out the door and an appropriate influx of cash in order to more actively stake our own claim on Saul.

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