Liverpool on Alert as Dortmund Look to Sell Attackers

Parsing the statements of players, managers, agents and executives to arrive at a reasonable conclusion with regards to transfer rumours can be an arduous task. Only on rare occasions are situations as straight-forward as, say, a defender being told he won't be sold, but has to go out on loan, and the media getting this information straight from the manager's mouth. Usually, one has to dissect the reports in order to extract the truth of the matter, if indeed there is any to be found.

Thus, when Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans -Joacim Watzke states that his club possesses too many attacking players, and that "something can happen there", it would be easy for Reds fans to begin dreaming of gifted 18-year olds from Pennsylvania who the club has been linked with on several occasions in the past year alone.

Coupled with a few other factors, however, such wishful thinking comes to an abrupt end. First of all, Pulisic signed a new long-term deal with the German club less than a month ago, and has played in every match since that time, giving no indication that BVB are looking to sell. Secondly, there are other attackers at the club who look far more likely to move on. Mario Götze, for instance. Remember him? Liverpool were linked with the former Bayern man this summer, but Götze decided to rejoin his former club instead.

Since then, the speedo-savant has failed to break into the side, making only nine league starts, owing to both a familiar failure to stay healthy, and to perform when not on the physio table. It has come to the point for Götze that German legend Lothar Matthäus has suggested the 24-year old would be best off heading to China, where his lack of pace won't be such a hindrance for him. All of which is to say that, despite his talent, the current iteration of Götze wouldn't get into Klopp's hard-running Liverpool side in any case.

So. Dortmund are probably looking to offload Götze. They will be looking to keep Pulisic. Liverpool are unlikely to pursue to former, and equally unlikely to succeed in their advances towards the latter. The unending drought of Reds football drags ever on and on, our hair greys, and our skin wrinkles.