PHOTO: Rickie Lambert in Liverpool for Medical?

With a final offer of £25mil for Southampton captain Adam Lallana submitted  following England’s 3-0 win over Peru yesterday evening, it was starting to look like a race to see who’d join Liverpool first — the attacking midfielder, or team-mate Rickie Lambert.

Well, it looks like we have our answer with Sky Sports, and many other major media outlets, reporting that the 32-year old striker is on Merseyside ahead of completing a medical with his boyhood club. The Reds are believed to have launched a bid in the region of £4mil +add-ons for Lambert’s services, and with the striker intent on leaving St. Mary’s this summer, a meeting with first team doctor Zaf Iqbal appears to be the only thing standing in his way of completing a dream move back to the Anfield outfit.

Liverpool born and bred Lambert was released by the club he supported as a boy at the age of fifteen, but never stopped supporting his home-town club. Although the move comes as a bit of a surprise — likely even to the man himself — with 13-goals and 10-assists to his name last season, it’s not coming completely out of left field.

Reds boss Brendan Rodgers is keen to get the majority of his transfer business out of the way before the World Cup kicks off in less than three weeks time. If he completes his move to Liverpool, Lambert will be the sixth member of Roy Hodgson’s England squad — and that number will rise to seven should team-mate Adam Lallana follow him to Anfield.

Despite the ill-will felt towards the national team from a portion of the Reds support, it’ll be hard not to have a soft spot for the Three Lions with nearly a third of the squad potentially made up of our own players. On the flip-side, that’s quite a few players that’ll be coming back disappointed after they crash and burn so spectacularly…