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Despite the laundry list of names being linked to Liverpool in recent weeks, Brendan Rodgers insists the club have only made three or four inquiries about players. And despite that there have been few players the club has seriously considered yet—and with Gylfi Sigurdsson off the table, even fewer inquired about that are still available—the club are hoping to complete at least one new signing this week before heading off to North America to begin final preparations for the pre-season tour.
Flanked by Lucas and Jay spearing, the new Liverpool boss today sat down with the press to discuss that tour and the coming season. A wide range of topics were touched on, from Lucas' desire to return to fitness in time for the new season to suggestions that rumours linking Andy Carroll to AC Milan are nothing more than the sort of thing that's to be expected with any quality player during transfer season, but by far the most interesting passage for most will be from when he teased fans by raising the possibility of the club making an immediate signing or two:
For players to be associated with Liverpool is great, but the reality is we've only made three or four enquires about players and we hopefully can close out one deal this week, maybe two. We're certainly hopeful we can do one and then look to add to it over the course of the pre-season.
I will never speak about targets and possible players. It's not something I like to do. All I will say is there has been a whole raft of players linked with coming to Liverpool, and there are very, very few of them that are actually real targets for us.
With the club managing to keep its summer business quiet aside from the Sigurdsson chase, there's very little reliable information out there to determine just who the remaining two or three players the club has inquired about are or in particular who that one player Rodgers considers a near certainty to arrive this week is. However, following the press conference, Rodgers is reported to have told the BBC's Ben Smith off camera that the player coming in was an "incredibly exciting" one who the fans would love.
At least that this exciting new signing is likely to be revealed within a matter of days should cut down somewhat on the wild and unreasonable speculation that's bound to begin to kick off now as every fan, fueled by unscrupulous transfer sites and tabloid back pages, tries to figure out how their favourite potential £40M signing must be the one Rodgers is talking about.