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The transfer window may be half a week old and Liverpool are as yet not linked solidly to any target bar perhaps Divock Origi, but there’s still plenty of less than solid links to pick through. The biggest so far is Xherdan Shaqiri, the 23-year-old Swiss winger who has been linked to the club almost continuously since before the World Cup kicked off last summer.
Liverpool may not be in especially desperate need of another all-purpose attacker who isn’t a striker, but that hasn’t stopped the rumours. And the Express today is staking what little reputation they have on pushing the rumour that a deal has been agreed between Liverpool and Bayern Munich and that Shaqiri is set to accept the "lucrative" contract the club have offered, suggesting that a finalised deal is imminent.
Not so fast say Talksport, who are equally certain a deal for Shaqiri is done—only one that sends him to Inter Milan on loan with an obligation for the Italian club to make the move permanent this summer. These follow on from rumours over the weekend that Shaqiri’s agent was in Italy or that maybe Inter’s representatives were in Germany but either way Shaqiri’s people were for reals talking to Bayern's people somewhere.
What everybody agrees on is that Shaqiri’s leaving Bayern this window. Of course, everybody was just as certain he was leaving Bayern over the summer and he didn’t. But this time he is. To either Inter or Liverpool. Or maybe Juventus or Manchester United, who are also rumoured to have been chasing him but have now been beaten by either Inter or Liverpool, depending on who’s doing the rumour mongering.
The other thing that pretty much everybody agrees on is that Shaqiri is likely to cost around £12M, either as a straight purchase or on a six-month loan deal with an obligation to buy him at a later date, which rather amounts to the same thing in the end and seems a fair price for the young attacker. Though in the end everybody’s probably just as likely to be wrong again and he’ll still be at Bayern come February.
