Gary Neville says FSG really should have bought £100m player for Liverpool this summer

Liverpool owners FSG failed Jurgen Klopp by not spending £100m to sign Moises Caicedo this summer.

Despite being heavily linked with a move away from Brighton, Caicedo is still on the market for the moment. The Seagulls want an enormous figure for him though, which Liverpool are not interested in paying.

Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped fans and pundits alike hailing the 21-year-old as being the answer to the Reds’ midfield issues. And speaking on The Overlap today, Gary Neville joined that chorus.

“He’s [Klopp] shielding them [FSG] there’s no doubt,” says the pundit. “He’s doing an unbelievable job, he’s done the best job of anybody I believe in the last seven, eight years, [given] the budget he’s had and the spend that he’s had. But he can’t keep doing it, he can’t keep doing it.

“He needs that money to be able to compete. They should just be going and getting Caicedo now for him and saying ‘right, there you go, that’s dealt with, it’s sorted, it’s £100m.’

“But they’re not. They’re trying to pinch someone off Southampton for 40 million quid [Romeo Lavia], who’s a good player don’t get me wrong, but Jurgen Klopp needs the real deal.

“They can’t challenge Manchester City with a player who’s got potential, they need to do it with a player who’s real. I do think it’s going to come back on the owners at some point.”

Neville urges Liverpool to get Caicedo

It’s certainly tempting to see Neville’s point of view here. There are plenty of fans who would claim that spending £100m on Caicedo would magically solve Liverpool’s problems, too.

But the reality is that the Reds have too much to do to go spending quite so much on just one player.

That’s on FSG and the recruitment team as well, of course. They’ve left the team malnourished over recent years, in the midfield especially.

They backed themselves into a situation where they now absolutely have to bring in three or four midfielders this summer. A new defender wouldn’t go amiss either.

So, while Caicedo may still be the outstanding candidate, it simply isn’t going to happen. You don’t get the impression that that bothers Klopp especially, he seems to thrive on bringing in slightly less fashionable players and working wonders with them.

It’s also worth pointing out that Caicedo is still a very young player himself. He isn’t 24-year-old seasoned international and ex club captain Declan Rice, for example. Rice has over 250 senior appearances to his name and was also overpriced at £105m.

So, there’s every chance that Liverpool could spend £100m on Caicedo and he’d still take plenty of time to settle in and get up to speed. As has been shown countless times throughout football, transfer price really means very little. We’ll always back Klopp and his coaches to get the best out of whatever they’ve got available. That isn’t going to change.