Rumour Mongering: Besiktas Want to Make Loris Karius Stay Permanent

It feels like it’s been a while now since we’ve talked about Loris Karius, which is probably a good thing given back when we were the stories seemed to be mostly bad ones what with Besiktas not paying him or not wanting to keep him or the player struggling to settle.

Those, for the most part at least, were the sorts of stories we got for more than a year after the German shot stopper headed to Turkey on a two-year loan with what we thought was an obligation to buy as long as a series of achievable performance metrics were met.

Today, though, there are rumours out of Turkey claiming that while Karius has settled and the club value him and would like to keep him, Besiktas might not be able to unless the Reds are willing to tweak the payment structure of the agreed-to £8M purchase clause.

At least as the story goes in Fanatik today, while such a fee might be peanuts to a big Premier League side like Liverpool, for Besiktas it’s a major investment and one that they would have to drag out over four years at just £2M per season to be able to afford.

Of course, we have no idea how the £8M purchase clause was originally structured in the loan deal. We also have no idea how, if it’s based on a series of supposedly achievable performance metrics being met, Besiktas would be able to back out at this stage in things.

Still, Liverpool have run into this before, especially with Serie A clubs, when purchase options that appeared solid turn out not to be when everything is said and done. And if the story is true, Besiktas do at least still want Karius and are willing to pay the agreed fee.