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With every signal sent by Brendan Rodgers amounting to a declaration that Mamadou Sakho is seen as surplus to requirements, interest in the centre half was inevitable. First, Roma rumoured to have offered to take him on loan, which Liverpool rebuffed. Then, Bayer Leverkusen were said to be considering him. Now, L’Equipe claim the Germans are preparing a €10M bid.
Liverpool paid what, at the time, was around €20M for Sakho in 2013. He’s since spent two seasons at Anfield, run down half his contract, and appears not to be in Rodgers’ plans. It’s easy to say he’s worth more than the €10M Leverkusen are believed to be offering, but half the price paid for a player with half his contract gone who the manager doesn’t rate and can’t even make the bench hardly seems out of line.
It doesn’t line up with the perceived value most Reds fans have of Sakho, but given his situation it hardly seems an unreasonable starting point for a club on the continent who are interested in him. If they’re willing to tack on a couple of million and Sakho is willing to push for a move, it might even provide a quite solid starting point to getting a deal done. And if things continue as they have, one expects Sakho will push.
He may be already, quietly and behind the scenes. But if he’s not in the squad for a third game in a row when Liverpool travel to face Arsenal at the Emirates, it’s difficult to imagine him simply accepting his role as fourth—or even fifth if Rodgers prefers Joe Gomez at centre half over him—on Liverpool’s depth chart heading into a season when he’ll have to play to keep his place for France heading into the Euros.
If that’s where he stands at Liverpool—and so far, Brendan Rodgers’ actions have said it is—then Leverkusen’s offer seems entirely in line with it. Generous even, perhaps. And for Sakho, an uptempo Bundesliga club playing in the Champions League would certainly appeal. It’s going to be an interesting few weeks to close out the transfer window.
