Brendan Rodgers has been linked to a number of his former players since arriving at Liverpool; he was successful in bringing Joe Allen along, tried to get Gylfi Sigurdsson but failed, and has had a range of other Swansea City squad members attached to rumors about transfers to Merseyside. There haven't been many from his time at Reading, though, which made last month's talk about Alex Pearce somewhat surprising. That talk went into overdrive yesterday, when a picture surfaced of managing director Ian Ayre apparently out on the town with the defender, who's available on a free after seeing his Reading contract run out.
Most took it as a done deal, someone purporting to be his cousin on Twitter announced her excitement at the move, and another supposed in-the-know asserted that the deal was done. In all caps, people. Serious business.
Only James Pearce from the Liverpool Echo doesn't quite think so, and he's managed to either be ahead of or right on every major story over the last few months:
Despite the pic of him with Ian Ayre, I'm told #LFC have absolutely no interest in signing Alex Pearce.
— James Pearce (@JamesPearceEcho) June 1, 2013
That's word from a source who's not interested in Twitter followers or making a name for himself/herself, and for the time being there's no reason to believe that he'd be off-base here. The Pearce link has always seemed a little lazy, picking up on the fact that Rodgers promoted him to vice- and then full captain at Reading during his brief tenure as manager, and while the picture looked to be a convincing piece of evidence, Liverpool don't seem as though they're desperately in need of Pearce's services.
The club need depth across the back, no question, but we're not yet certain where the futures of Martin Skrtel and Sebastian Coates lie, and if the development of Martin Kelly and Andre Wisdom is to be fostered, adding yet another name in addition to those already linked would almost be too much. That's assuming Kyriakos Papadopoulos and Tiago Ilori are brought in, of course, but for now there's nothing to suggest this is a move Liverpool need.