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New Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp may have said he's not going to raid Borussia Dortmund for players, but that hasn't stopped the mongers today from reviving the longest running rumour saga of the Fenway Sports Group era: Marco Reus.
If Rafa Benitez' later years were dedicated to linking the club with Arda Turan—now on to his third club that's not Liverpool—and there's been a steady drip of out of favour Barcelona players on offer each and every window, recent seasons have come to be defined by a slew of dubious Reus transfer rumours.
Dubious because there's a quite solid case to be made that it was nothing more than fans collectively coalescing around a favourite potential signing that got the Dortmund attacker linked in the first place and that at no point has there been any reason to believe the club are actually in for him.
Fans wanted Reus, amplifying his name on the echo chamber that is Twitter until even club owner John Henry was cheekily Tweeting "Sign Reus." No journalist with actual ties to the club, though, has ever thought he's a real target. Klopp arriving, if anything, only makes Reus less likely to arrive.
The bookies, though, think they know differently. Today, they've dropped odds to 6/1 that Reus will sign for Liverpool, making the Reds strong favourites over 12/1 Barcelona and 20/1 Manchester United. The tabloids have all since picked up on this. The bookies, though, don't really know differently.
What they do know, perhaps, is that somebody or bodies are betting on Reus to Liverpool. If that's the case, lowering the line means paying out less to new betters who do the same if it comes to pass while encouraging some people to put their money elsewhere in the hopes of a bigger payout.
Conversely, it could also mean that they're trying to induce betting, dropping the line to make people think Reus to Liverpool is possible and encouraging money to move towards him. It's impossible to know which without having access to the bookies' books, which obviously isn't happening.
About the only thing that's certain is that Sky Bet, currently leading with the lowest odds of Reus arriving at Liverpool, haven't been handed super-secret inside information. And that still nobody with an ounce of credibility thinks Marco Reus to Liverpool is a real thing.