Over the weekend, we got to hear about the pursuit of Sunderland ‘keeper Simon Mignolet as Brendan Rodgers goes in search of a replacement for the want-away Pepe Reina, but the news that the Merseyside club have reportedly submitted a bid large enough to trigger the £20mil release clause the Ukrainian club had built into Mkhitaryan’s contract is enough to give pause. Rodgers has indentified the 24-year old, who looks suspiciously like David Schwimmer, as his number one target this summer and with his haul of 25 league goals last year it’s readily apparent why.
Rodgers recently spoke of his desire to add an additional 20 goals to the Reds repertoire and the addition of Aspas and Mkhitaryan could be enough to offset – stats wise anyways – the departure of the increasingly agitating Luis Suarez. A lack of Champions League football is suspected to be one of the underlying root causes of the Uruguayan’s wandering eye and this could also prove to be a stumbling block in our attempts to tie down Mkhitaryan with Juventus and high-flying Borussia Dortmund also being linked with the Armenian goal-machine. Convincing a top player to join a club without any European football is hard enough, but doing it with Ian Ayre in charge of negotiations? This might be a bit harder than expected…
