Liverpool is not back in action until next Wednesday and Trent Alexander-Arnold is unlikely to be playing given he is currently injured. And yet, the Reds’ number 66 has dominated the headlines for the past couple of days.
Real Madrid wants to sign him; Liverpool wants to tie him down to a new contract. But the suggestion is that the Scouser is edging towards a free transfer move to the Bernabeu, and everyone has had their say.
“Carra, you’ve been a young player at a club who has come through the ranks,” Gary Neville said on the Stick To Football podcast, brought to you by Sky Bet. “You’re also not usually treated as well as you should be on contracts.
“I reckon a couple of years ago, probably around the time Virgil van Dijk was probably going through that patch when he looked a little bit like he might be just teetering a little bit. They’ve looked at them and thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll wait with you’.
“And the players are probably holding that against them a little bit now and thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, when you could have come to me 18 months ago…'”
Is it really that simple, though? If Liverpool offered an extension to anyone 18 months or two years ago, even taking away the fact that Jurgen Klopp couldn’t guarantee he was staying, there is no guarantee that they would have accepted. That is far too simplistic, especially in the case of Alexander-Arnold.
(Image: Michael Regan – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
When Alexander-Arnold signed a four-year contract in 2021, he might have considered a move elsewhere a possibility at some point in his career. And Real Madrid’s interest is nothing new.
It is more than a year now since Klopp announced his departure and between that point and a few months into this season, there was uncertainty — to some degree — about what the future might hold at Anfield without him. What comes next is more obvious now, but there is also a decision to make, with the allure of Real Madrid’s glamor clear.
Before Klopp’s departure, there was uncertainty behind the scenes too. Jorg Schmadtke was sporting director for a short spell and Julian Ward didn’t last long in the role, though he has now returned along with Michael Edwards. Despite Neville suggesting that the “tea lady” could have offered Alexander-Arnold a new deal, there is significantly more to the process than that.
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“I think with Trent, it’s unforgivable,” Neville said. “Let’s be clear, whether you’re going through a turbulent time in the boardroom or not, if you’re the owner of the club and you look at Trent two years ago, even if you’ve got disruption in your sporting department, you’re looking at it and thinking, ‘We’ve got to sign him up! He’s one of our own!'”
The suggestion that Alexander-Arnold could signed a new contract and then left for a fee disregards Real Madrid’s avoidance of such situations in recent years too. Kylian Mbappe, David Alaba and Antonio Rudiger have all been snapped up when their deals expired and the Spanish giant was lining up to repeat the trick with Alphonso Davies until he extended with Bayern Munich.
It also misses the point that bringing in a transfer fee doesn’t change the narrative that much. Raheem Sterling and Luis Suarez both brought in good sums of cash when they left, but neither was lauded for ditching Liverpool — far from it. Neither of them were homegrown players, either, and whether that is a fair element to the equation or not, it is an inevitability that it will be a factor in how a possible exit is perceived.
As ever, there is no simple assessment of the situation that encompasses all angles. The suggestion that Liverpool should have seen an Alexander-Arnold exit coming and there was an easy fix, though, is just not true.
