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Mikel Arteta’s increasing desperation to furnish his faltering Arsenal side with another forward in January does not make such a move any likelier at all. Trent Alexander-Arnold It is funny that reports of Real Madrid doing entirely Real Madrid things in the transfer market apparently have to be treated with absolute seriousness and reverence, as if it is any ordinary team making any ordinary bid for any ordinary rival’s ordinary player. Making Arne Slot answer questions about the contract statuses of Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold at least twice a week is tiresome and tedious enough but forcing him to have to pretend that selling one of those players for £20m halfway through a potentially historically brilliant season is an even halfway realistic outcome is a bit daft.
Liverpool sold a whole two true first-team players in January transfer windows during Jurgen Klopp’s entire managerial reign. And even then, Dominic Solanke was very much on the periphery of the squad before Bournemouth sensed a £19m opportunity. The only actual meaningful sale of a star midway through a campaign was that of Phillipe Coutinho seven years ago So unless Real have an extra £120m or so stowed away somewhere and £20m was just their opening gambit to an ambitious long-term play, Alexander-Arnold will not be leaving Liverpool before the end of his current contract.
All parties respect and realise that. Liverpool have no intention of losing one of Arne Slot’s key players while leading the Premier and Champions League tables. Alexander-Arnold might have his head turned at some point but it is screwed on enough to know that he stands to lose plenty but gain nothing by leaving early, if he even plans to at all.
Real are playing their usual games and that is fine. But is it really necessary for the wider footballing world to imagine ‘Liverpool might sell Alexander-Arnold to Real Madrid for £20m in January’ is A Thing? That the supposedly perennial fear of losing a player to free agency in any way overrides common sense and might persuade a frustratingly sensible club into a panicked cut-price move which would likely derail their season? As foolish/brave as Liverpool are to let three vital players simultaneously run their contracts down, there are precious few clubs who actually indulge in the rushed sale of someone with six months left until their terms expire just to recoup some money. It’s about as frequent as genuine swap deals in terms of both excited reporting and rare occurrence.
READ NEXT : Real Madrid-bound Alexander-Arnold and trophy dodger Arteta on watch-list in 2025 Alexander Isak Newcastle have contributed to the conversation somewhat with their negligent squad-planning and semi-frequent scaremongering about how no player is unsellable, but it does feel like a few more tectonic plates would have to shift before any of their Holy Trinity is actually sacrificed to the PSR overlords. The most recent workaround was to simply offload a couple of pure profit wunderkinds. Yankuba Minteh and Elliot Anderson helped fill the most recent black hole so none of Isak, Bruno Guimaraes or Anthony Gordon had to.
Those three players have been predictably crucial to Newcastle’s recent rejuvenation and as hilarious as the fan meltdown would be, there is zero prospect of any being sold to a Premier League rival or otherwise while the Magpies are 5th and in a cup semi-final. The summer is a slightly different matter but even then, Jacob Murphy’s emergence as a £50m-rated uber-effective forward has been timely. The new contracts signed by Gordon and Guimaraes in the last two Octobers do offer a more relevant outlook on their futures as even though Isak’s deal has more than three years remaining, there will be a desire to bring him back into line with the highest earners to reflect his importance to the side before he is tempted away.
But Newcastle retain all the bargaining power for now and no amount of textbook January Window Bingo nonsense from Paul Merson imploring Arsenal to “break the bank for him” will change that. A former player giving such sage transfer advice? That’s your replacement for Edu as sporting director right there. Marcus Rashford Again, Rashford has framed the narrative in a certain way by publicly saying he is “ready for a new challenge and the next steps”.
Having not played since that grand declaration, it seems apparent his first career hurdle will be to get back into the Manchester United side. From there it will be interesting to see what happens. It is an imperfect transfer storm of obviously good player in consistently poor form on ridiculously high wages.
Rashford will want something close to his current £350,000-a-week pay packet and Manchester United would demand £60m or so, but any buying club looking at those figures will compare them to his recent output and point out that simply do not match. With the notoriously difficult January transfer window another factor to consider it is unfathomable that all the necessary boxes could be ticked with such volatile elements at play. An exit for Rashford this month is simply not feasible.
MORE ON RASHFORD THE OUTCAST FROM F365 👉 Marcus Rashford releases 28-word statement blasting ‘ridiculous and false’ fresh Man Utd ‘quit’ story 👉 New ‘factor’ behind Rashford omission revealed after Man Utd boss Amorim ‘asked’ about ‘night out’ Matheus Cunha While an obvious example will have been missed, it is difficult to recall the last time a club actively fighting Premier League relegation decided to sell quite clearly their best player mid-season. While the promise of inflated funds to invest in and hopefully improve the overall standard of a sinking ship can be tempting, the risk far outweighs any potential reward. Even the most ridiculous of clubs generally recognise this and with the days of clubs feeling forced to accept cut-price deals for prized assets after dropping into the Championship long gone, the panicked January sale to drive finances makes almost no sense.
Far more common and practical is the mutually beneficial but ultimately flimsy contract extension which scratches the back of the selling club by guaranteeing a fair price and the player by making an eventual exit ironically easier. Wolves, apropos of nothing, have opened talks with Cunha over a longer deal with better pay and a lower release clause in the event of relegation. Welcome to Arsenal or Manchester United in the summer , buddy.
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