da betobet： When the Premier League comes back at the weekend, one of the biggest subplots to keep an eye on will be the potential return of players who spent the summer angling for moves away from their clubs only to have been forced to stay.
da pixbet： There are three who stand out given their clubs’ very public stances on blocking their moves away. Virgil van Dijk at Southampton, Alexis Sanchez at Arsenal and Philippe Coutinho at Liverpool. It will be interesting to see if they start for their clubs next weekend; after Sanchez’s appearance at Anfield last week and Coutinho’s goal for Brazil during the international break, you get the feeling that they are two who will play some part for their clubs after the international break.
But perhaps the club in the best position with regards to their erstwhile wantaway player is Liverpool, who held onto Coutinho despite interest from Barcelona this summer.
All through the window, the will-he won’t-he nature of the transfer saga was shot down with monotonous regularity from Liverpool’s powers that be: they insisted once a week that their player would not be sold for any kind of money, and despite reports of a desperate £140m bid just before the transfer window closed in Spain (a day after it closed in Britain), the Reds held firm.
There was another trope of the summer, though. And that was the insinuation that none of these players would be able to sulk for the rest of the season if their clubs blocked their sale. We were told that, since this season falls just before a World Cup year, players would have to play hard or face the ignominy of missing out on their countries’ squads for the trip to Russia next summer.
And yet, for all apart from Coutinho, that might all be mood. Virgil van Dijk’s Netherlands side may not even qualify for the World Cup anyway, and won’t as it stands. They will face Sweden in what looks like the crunch final game of the group, and even then it looks to be only for a play-off place.
For Arsenal, you get the feeling that no matter how badly Alexis Sanchez plays this season, he will still be picked for Chile anyway. The South American champions aren’t packed out with world class names like the Arsenal star, and given he is such a talisman for his national team, he won’t be dropped simply for sulking – though it’s never easy to simply turn on the form when it comes to a major tournament.
Coutinho, meanwhile, isn’t in the same position. His country have already qualified for the World Cup after an efficient qualifying campaign where they topped the South American qualifiers, and he’s certainly not the best player in the squad. He needs to have to a good season to justify his place, certainly in the starting XI. In that regard, Liverpool are not in the same position as the other two clubs.
But it’s not entirely clear what it means for Liverpool.
Jurgen Klopp can now pick one of his best players for the rest of the season – or at the very least until January – and in Coutinho, he has an attacking option at his disposal that no other player in the squad brings to the table. But on the other hand, finding a position for the Brazilian will not be as easy as it might have appeared a year ago.
Coutinho doesn’t seem to fit with the dynamism of Liverpool’s front three – something that became obvious at times last season when he was unable to provide the spark Liverpool needed in the absence of Sadio Mane. Nor does the Brazilian seem to be a natural fit for the heavy-pressing midfield three who have played with energy and verve so far this season.
So although selling him after publicly proclaiming that he would not be sold meant Liverpool had to stick to their guns, and although bagging the money would not have guaranteed being able to invest it in the current market (just look at Barcelona’s own struggles in attempting to replace Neymar), it does seem as though Liverpool could have done without the Brazilian in a way that might not have been the case had they lost, say, Sadio Mane.
And yet, Coutinho is still one of the team’s best players and still brings a very different attacking option to the table, something Klopp will probably be thankful of given the Reds will play more matches this season than they did last year, and will come up against all sorts of opposition along the way; some willing to come out and attack, others happy to sit deep and defend.
That’s when having a player like Coutinho, having to hit form in a World Cup year will come in very handy indeed.
So of the clubs whose players have been on strike this summer, it’s Liverpool who have come out of it in a much stronger position to Arsenal and Southampton.