Ousmane Dembele Begins New Career as Rumoured Liverpool Transfer Target

Once a rumoured Liverpool transfer target always a rumoured Liverpool transfer target. It’s understandable, perhaps. After all, if most transfer rumours aren’t true in the first place, you might as well just re-use the names you’ve thrown out there before if you’re a rumour monger.

It becomes the lazy, easy thing to do when you’ve got nothing new, to toss out Arda Turan or Pedro Rodriguez and say the club are interested in them for the 73rd summer in a row. Neither is perhaps a name linked often any more, but both spent six or seven seasons on the verge of an Anfield move.

Now, Ousmane Dembele looks on the verge of having a long and impressive career as a player who might end up at Anfield but won’t, as he’s being linked for the second year in a row—and this after making a big money move to Borussia Dortmund—while being just 19 years old.

Last summer, Dembele was meant to be one of Jürgen Klopp’s top targets, but the hugely promising young Frenchman instead chose Klopp’s former club. There, he has scored seven goals and 16 assists in 36 total appearances so far this season, a stunning return for the young winger.

Which in turn means a the rumour mongers want to link him with a summer move despite that he only just showed up at one of the biggest clubs in Germany. Enter Liverpool and Barcelona, the club who wanted him before and one of the few clubs a clear class above Dortmund.

It’s easy, it’s obvious, and it’s massively transparent. That’s before you even figure out that it’s the Metro and Mirror leading the charge on this latest round of Dembele rumours, who are also throwing Real Madrid into the mix as a maybe, just to cover all their bases.

At best, Liverpool would be a lateral move for Dembele right now, and that’s assuming the club make it back into the Champions League. If the player had wanted Klopp and Anfield, he would have made that move last summer. He didn’t, and thinking he will do it this year is ridiculous.

It’s a lazy rumour, transparently so. It’s a young player who has over-delivered on expectations, a player whose name fans will recognise. And it’s a player who could spend the better part of a decade being linked with a Liverpool move and never actually making it. Oh joy.