Your Transfer Rumour is Bullshit: Daniel Sturridge to Arsenal on Loan

Earlier today, a changing betting line had rumour mongers scrambling to link Daniel Sturridge with a deadline day move to Arsenal. As if that bit of fabrication weren’t unlikely enough, they’ve now doubled down on the ridiculously unlikely and quite thoroughly nonsense rumour by claiming Sturridge could end up at the Gunners on loan before the transfer window slams shut in a few hours.

This time out, it’s The Daily Star and Goal pushing the story, insisting Klopp wants Sturridge togo out on loan for the season to gain fitness—similar to what he wanted Mamadou Sakho to do. As a result, one of Surridge’s representatives supposedly has approached Arsenal about the possibility of hosting the striker not permanently but on loan for the 2016-17 season. Which is all around baffling.

It’s so strange that it’s hard to know where to begin to pick it apart. There’s the bit where Arsenal, who have finished above Liverpool most years this century and remain a permanent Champions League fixture while the Reds are struggling to rejoin the elite, would be taking a Liverpool player no loan for a year. To get him fit so that he could then return to Anfield next season.

There’s the bit where Liverpool think Sturridge is good enough to make Arsenal—a side they’re meant to be fighting for a spot in the top four—better and see regular minutes with to regain said fitness but that he wouldn’t be able to do the same for Liverpool. There’s the point where the whole thing would supposedly be done with an eye towards having Sturridge return to Liverpool next summer.

Needless to say, this isn’t a deal that’s happening, and journalists with ties to the club at The Liverpool Echo and elsewhere have been quick to check with their sources at Anfield and shoot it down. Though really, that it’s not a rumour with any basis in fact isn’t what’s surprising. What’s surprising is that any paper—any tabloid even—would have the gall to run with it in the first place.