Rumor Mongering: Atletico Madrid Join Liverpool In Timo Werner Chase

It is a truism that the great sports clubs refresh their squads closer to their peaks than to their declines. In striving for continual improvement, the hierarchies at the most successful teams are those constantly looking for opportunities to refresh the squad through highly targeted recruitment and promotion from the academy.

All of which makes RB Leipzig’s Timo Werner an unendingly fascinating proposition. His numbers alone are quite ludicrous: 17 goals and nine assists across 20 matches in all competitions has him contributing to a score once every 61 minutes. You don’t need high-powered analytics to know that that is superstar levels of production.

The Reds have been heavily linked with the 23-year-old, a transfer made all the more attractive due to the knowledge that his services could be acquired on the cheap.

However, others have started to notice, as Spain’s Atletico Madrid are rumored to be weighing entering the race for Werner’s signature. The capital club are said to be looking to offload the fading Diego Costa and see the Bundesliga star as the ideal replacement, according to Spanish radio station, COPE.

This mean that with Manchester United being the only other club reliably linked to the German to this point, the Reds would now seem to finally have some real competition for their target such that it could push a transfer originally mooted for the summer up to January.

Werner’s tantalizing stylistic fit for Jürgen Klopp’s high-energy pressing game coupled with versatility across the front line makes him even fitting deputy to the inimitable Roberto Firmino arguably makes his recruitment more vital than the swiftly-rising linkages to Borussia Dortumund starlet, Jadon Sancho.

Prepare for some winter fireworks, folks.