Liverpool's Missed Transfers and Salah's Impending Farewell
Liverpool’s season has been shaped as much by the deals they didn’t do as the ones they did. A summer of bold spending and a record-breaking outlay was supposed to harden a title-winning squad for another tilt at the top. Instead, the champions have been scrapping just to lock down a Champions League place.
They did that job at the weekend. A 3-1 win over Crystal Palace pushed Arne Slot’s side above Aston Villa and effectively secured a top-four finish. On paper, that’s stability. In the stands and in the boardroom, the conversation is very different.
Because as Liverpool look ahead to life after Mohamed Salah, one of the club’s greatest modern icons, a legend of the past can’t let go of two names who got away.
Gerrard: “That hurts even more”
Steven Gerrard has never been shy about what Liverpool means to him, and the former captain didn’t sugarcoat his frustration over the club’s recent transfer misses.
The 45-year-old pointed straight at Manchester City’s business for Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo, two players heavily linked with Anfield before heading to the Etihad in January for a combined £95 million.
“They should be playing for Liverpool, so that hurts even more,” Gerrard told TNT Sports. “We were linked with two of those players and that would have made a big difference to Liverpool.”
Guehi, once Crystal Palace captain and long viewed as a future defensive pillar, had been at the heart of a drawn-out saga and looked on course to join Liverpool as a free agent next season. Instead, he now anchors City’s back line.
Semenyo, who lit up the early part of the campaign with Bournemouth, attracted interest across the league. City moved quickest and most decisively, landing the powerful forward for around £60m and adding yet another weapon to Pep Guardiola’s arsenal.
Gerrard’s irritation isn’t just about what Liverpool missed. It’s about what City gained.
“I’ve said it before on record. Two top, top players. And for the price that they got them in as well. One on a free. One was, you know, £60million,” he said.
“In today’s market, they’re two bargains. They’re two bargains. Quality players, experienced, ready to go into the prime years of their career. International-level players. And what they’ve done is they’ve just helped kick City on at the right time.”
For a Liverpool side trying to refresh a title-winning core while staying within financial lines, watching two long-term targets walk into the dressing room of their biggest domestic rival cuts deep. The club that once set the standard for smart, surgical recruitment suddenly finds itself looking at the what-ifs.
Salah’s last dance – and a planned apology
While the debate over recruitment rumbles on, Salah’s impending exit hangs over everything. The Egyptian is expected to leave at the end of the season, and every game he misses through injury only sharpens the sense of an era closing.
One of his former team-mates is already eyeing that final chapter – and wants to ruin it.
Caoimhin Kelleher, now at Brentford, could face Salah on the last day of the season if the forward returns to fitness. The goalkeeper has his own agenda: keep Salah out, keep Brentford’s European hopes alive, and only then say sorry.
“Hopefully I’m apologising to him (Salah) after,” Kelleher told The Athletic, outlining his plan to deny his old colleague a storybook goodbye.
The Republic of Ireland international left Anfield last summer in search of regular football, swapping understudy status for a starting role in west London. What he took with him, though, was the education he received behind the scenes.
Facing Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino every week in training hardened him in a way no loan move could.
“If you’re making saves off them, that gives you confidence,” he explained. “They were the best in the league. Just to see how they finished and the pace they finish at… you have to get used to it.”
That finishing, that pace, that relentlessness – it defined Liverpool’s rise under Jürgen Klopp and now underpins the sense of loss as Salah prepares to walk away.
Liverpool, once the benchmark for getting every big decision right, are now staring at a summer where the margin for error shrinks again. Two targets have already slipped into City blue. Their greatest goalscorer of the modern era is heading for the exit.
The next move in the market will not just shape a squad. It will decide whether this is a gentle transition or the end of a golden cycle.
