Journalist suggests Liverpool dropped the ball on £25m ‘baller’ despite apparent transfer advantage
One reliable transfer reporter has suggested that Liverpool dropped the ball on a recent Premier League signing by not pushing harder for him over the summer despite being interested in him.
In May, SportBILD claimed that the Reds had eyes on a potential swoop for Brajan Gruda, who was playing with Mainz at the time, but the Germany under-21 playmaker instead joined Brighton last month in a £25m move (BBC Sport).
Writing in his Fact Files for Fabrizio Romano’s Daily Briefing, Christian Falk said that LFC had ‘knocked on the door’ for him earlier in the summer but never truly pushed for him, adding that, had they made their apparent interest ‘concrete’, they stood a strong chance of signing the 20-year-old.
The journalist outlined: “I heard that Liverpool were interested in him and perhaps they made a mistake not getting concrete with this one. That’s also the case for Bayern Munich, of course! In the end, they all couldn’t give him guarantees for this position, but they tried. They saw the big talent of Gruda.
“Liverpool were the only club from England’s Big Six who were talking with the management, but in the middle class of clubs in England there were plenty of sides who were interested in him. If Liverpool had been concrete for Gruda, it would have been a big challenge for Brighton to sign him.”
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Does Gruda represent something of a missed opportunity for Liverpool, in light of Falk’s revelations?
The journalist noted elswhere in the piece that Bayern Munich veteran Thomas Muller dubbed the youngster a ‘baller‘ and ‘something special‘, while Mainz sporting director Christian Heidel described him as the biggest talent he’d seen since Leroy Sane.
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The 20-year-old doesn’t have the biggest goal output for an attacking player (four goals and three assists in 28 Bundesliga games last season), but he somewhat compensates for that with his exceptional dribbling ability.
As per FBref, Gruda averaged 3.9 successful take-ons in 2023/24, placing him in the top 3% of positional peers in Europe’s five main leagues, so he certainly appears to be a footballer who can get fans off their seats with his trickery on the ball.
Even if he mightn’t have gone straight into Arne Slot’s strongest XI at Liverpool, he would’ve represented a more than useful squad option to challenge for a place in the team and enable regular starters to enjoy a well-earned breather.
Maybe the Reds should’ve pushed harder for him in the summer, but Falk hinted that Richard Hughes could ‘knock again’ for the playmaker if he views Brighton as ‘a stepping stone to a bigger move’, so perhaps we shouldn’t discount the possibility of seeing him at Anfield in future years.
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