Rumour Mongering: Klopp Covets Ismaïla Sarr

Watford winger Ismaïla Sarr has been on many Liverpool fans’ transfer wish lists for the last several transfer windows, and according to 90Min, he is near the top of manager Jürgen Klopp’s wish list as well.

The Senegalese winger apparently drew attention from Liverpool and Manchester United in 2020, but their loan-to-buy offers weren’t of interest to Watford, who were only willing to entertain a permanent transfer. So, Sarr stayed put and amassed 23 goal involvements (13 goals, 10 assists) for the Championship side last season.

Now, Liverpool is said to be interested in finally buying the 23-year-old outright, and they’re willing to drop as much as £40m to bring him to Merseyside. The report also claims that Sarr is amenable to the move, but with no word of Watford’s asking price, there isn’t much clarity on how likely a deal is, assuming any of this is even reliable information.

It’s hard to not get a little excited about new links to a move for Sarr. He is primarily a right-winger, but he can deploy anywhere across the front line. Essentially, he could slot in on the right in the same way that Diogo Jota has on the left.

The one potential caveat here is that Sarr is likely to be called up for Senegal in January to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations. Given that Liverpool will be hoping any attacking reinforcements they bring in will help fill the void left when Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané are away for AFCON, they may not want to bring in another attacker that will miss a month’s worth of matches in the middle of the season.

Overall, this is a fairly exciting rumour, but not one to put much stock into at the moment given the only report is from a dodgy source at best. There’s just no reason to get your hopes up until we start hearing about Liverpool’s interest from a club-connected journalist.