:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45669334/160387282.0.jpg)
The end of the transfer window may have slowed the pace of ridiculous transfer rumours, but it hasn’t stopped them completely. And when it comes to ridiculous transfer rumours, it’s hard to get any more ridiculous than suggestions this week that Liverpool are planning a £25M bid for Jack Wilshere.
The entire basis of the rumour would appear to be that Liverpool will need a major midfield signing to replace Steven Gerrard and that under FSG the club have gone young and British when possible. Jack Wilshere, at 23 years of age, counts as both. He also, though, counts as horribly injury prone, plays for a top four rival, and has never quite lived up to the hype that’s surrounded him since he broke into the Arsenal first team.
He has, to put it bluntly, stagnated, going from England’s next great midfielder to a player who struggles to get into the starting eleven for Arsenal even when he is fit. He’s technically talented but tactically suspect and has earned a reputation as a partier off the pitch and a player who, handed too much praise too soon, has rested on his laurels and steadily gotten worse rather than better.
All of which might not put Liverpool off him as a potential reclamation project for the right price. However, a £25M fee, one propped up by his largely unrealised promise, would most certainly not be the right price. And that’s without even getting into his injury issues. Wilshere has missed 17 league games this season. He missed 14 last year. He missed nearly the entire 11-12 season.
Leaving out even questions of fee and stagnation and whether he’s a player more interested in having a good time off the pitch than improving on it. Leaving out the fact that Arsenal would be wary of selling a player to Liverpool. At the end of the day, the simple fact of the matter is that, all other issues aside, Wilshere is quite simply not a healthy football player.
Liverpool will need at least one big midfield signing next summer. It seems beyond ridiculous to contemplate that signing ever turning out to be Jack Wilshere.
