Rumour Mongering: Liverpool Reach £60M Agreement for Roméo Lavia

After being encouraged by the agents of Moises Caicdeo to make a British-record bid for the Brighton midfielder only to then be told he would only move to Chelsea, reports have Liverpool going back to Southampton in an effort to sign Roméo Lavia.

Having shown their hand over Caicedo, though, and with Chelsea having put in a £55M bid for Lavia over the weekend, Liverpool have had to go to £60M in order to beat out the Blues and get Southampton—who have never seemed fond of negotiating with the Reds—to accept their approach.

However, having moved as hard as they did for Caicedo means they may have also lost ground with the player, with some reports suggesting Chelsea may have done strong work to convince him of their project—or simply that he’s somewhat soured on Liverpool.

If Liverpool truly are back in for Lavia, then, they may still have some work to do, though at the moment all of the information—from initial news of the £60M from The Guardian’s Jacob Steinberg to subsequent chatter about player uncertainty—has come from Chelsea-connected journalists.

The last significant transfer updates from the Liverpool end were reports on Saturday that they would not remove their bid for Caicedo after the player signalled he was set on his Chelsea move, and there has been no noise since from the club either about that deal’s failure or about Lavia.