Trent Alexander-Arnold waited to confirm where his future lies until Liverpool had nothing to play for this season. He didn’t want to be a distraction, and with the Premier League title now wrapped up, he has spoken publicly about the situation.
Though it has not yet been confirmed where he will be heading, it is something of an open secret that it will be Real Madrid. The lure of the Spanish giant — and a change of scenery— has proven too great to resist.
Speaking on the Kelly and Wrighty Show, former Arsenal striker and prominent soccer pundit Ian Wright has given his take on the situation. And he has strong feelings on the matter ahead of what could be a big summer for Liverpool.
“You can’t look at this scenario and see how it’s got at this point,” Wright said, as transcribed by TBR Football. “You have to look at the club and say 18 months ago they had to make that deal where they say ‘this is the best offer we can make, you will be the highest-paid player in the club’s history.’
“If he doesn’t do it, you need to sell him. From a business point of view, the club should not be losing a player like that for free, absolutely. Someone has taken their eye off the ball. For Liverpool, it’s a terrible, terrible situation they find themselves in.”
Liverpool was not likely to make Alexander-Arnold a higher-paid player than Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk — and nor should it have — but it did make large proposals to its number 66.
(Image: Alex Livesey – Danehouse/Getty Images)
Across many months, trying to tie the player down to an extension was viewed as a priority by its sporting director Richard Hughes. Ultimately, the Reds could not offer the one thing that Alexander-Arnold wanted above all else: a change.
The move is not financially motivated and there is no reason to doubt Alexander-Arnold when he says that it was a tough decision. In the end, he wanted to experience a new culture and try something new.
Losing Alexander-Arnold for nothing is far from ideal, but Real Madrid has tended to wait until player’s contracts run down rather than spending big sums in recent years. It took its time with Kylian Mbappe, for instance, and was lining up a similar move for Alphonso Davies before he extended his terms with Bayern Munich.
Liverpool could have got a relatively small fee in January, of course. Real Madrid did make an offer but it was flatly rejected out of hand.
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Accepting it would have risked derailing a season in which Liverpool has since won the league title, and it wouldn’t have been worth the gamble.
And though it could in theory have cashed in even earlier if it knew that Alexander-Arnold was thinking about moving on, there is no guarantee that Real Madrid would have offered a substantial fee back then — it hasn’t, generally, in recent transfer sagas.
The Reds are not pleased to be losing a unique talent and Alexander-Arnold will be impossible to replace directly. As the celebrations continue because of the Premier League title win, though, it is a difficult position to successfully argue, as Wright has, that Liverpool finds itself in a “terrible” situation right now. Ask most people, and it is anything but.
