Liverpool have made Bayern Munich forward Leroy Sane their No.1 target to replace Mo Salah.
And they are ready to smash their club transfer record of £80m for Darwin Nunez in order to land the Germany winger. The 27-year-old former Manchester City player is also attracting the interest of Real Madrid, but Kop boss Jurgen Klopp would love to lure Sane back to the Premier League in a club-record deal.
Sane, who has enjoyed a bright start to the season with seven goals in 11 games, won’t come cheap if Bayern are tempted into selling a player they prised away from Manchester City in exchange for £55million in July 2020.
But with Salah expected to leave to become the Saudi Pro League’s poster boy, almost certainly next summer, Liverpool who rejected a £150m bid from Al-Ittihad just before the last transfer deadline can expect further big offers, which would pay for Sane’s capture.
Klopp was delighted that he was able to head off the Saudi interest in August but knows that Salah is unlikely to resist the lure of playing in the Middle East next summer.
By then Liverpool will have a short list of big-name replacements with Sane at the top of it. Saudi Pro League director of football, Michael Emenalo is confident that Salah will be added to the array of European stars already involved in the desert.
He said: “Mo is welcome at any time. Mo is my personal favourite. There are many world-class players showing interest. It’s a place where you can go and have fun and definitely improve their economics.”
“But that means, of course, if you have to play that amount of games that sometimes your performance drops here or there, but it doesn’t happen too often. So, I think it was a perfect match. Nobody knew that [when he arrived], but we were all hoping for it and obviously that happened.”
