Rodgers Looking to Spend Big in Summer?

If reports over the past 48 hours are to be believed, Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers is looking to spend big in the summer to capitalize on his sides success this season. Whether Liverpool do go on to win the title remains to be seen but regardless, Rodgers is keen to ensure that the past 12 months of progress do not come undone with another window of inactivity and disappointing signings.

According to reports, the Reds manager is looking to make a huge ‘swoop’ on Southampton for a pair of their top performers over the course of the current Premier League season. He is believed to have his eye on both Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren, who would apparently be available for a combined fee of £35 million (or thereabouts).

Following on from his stellar first (not yet) full season in the Premier League, Lallana has impressed many observers and fans alike with his carefree, very un-English approach to the game and is likely to be on the plane to Brazil in the summer. The young Englishman would be an ideal fit for this Liverpool side and would find it hard to pass up on Champions League football, not to mention continued regular first-team football, which is something none of the other top 4 sides would be able to offer him at present.

Lovren on the other hand has been the leader of what has – Saturday morning’s result aside – been one of the more consistent defences in the league this season and Rodgers will be looking to bring in established players with Premier League experience. This is something which didn’t work as well as he’d hoped in the case of Kolo Toure but with the Reds likely to have much more spending power in the summer, they will not have to be looking for bargains and free transfers in order to get by.

With any number of Southampton stars likely to be on Liverpool’s radar this summer, these two are the most likely given that they fulfil a need in the Reds’ current squad so it will be interesting to see whether Southampton would be open to – or able to turn down – such an enormous offer.

Another rumour that just will not go away is that of Yehven Konoplyanka. The Dnipro player almost became a Liverpool player in January and has since been linked with every other club in Europe, including long-time poachers of Liverpool’s target, Tottenham.

However, it’s unlikely that Spurs will be poaching anybody from Liverpool this summer, and is more likely that they will be about to endure a clear-out after a wholly unremarkable, even borderline awful season after last summers big splash in the market.

The Ukrainian winger would add more bite and goals to a Liverpool attack that has relied heavily on Suarez and Sturridge for the majority of it’s goals, while also adding some much-needed quality to a squad which has, at times, looked very thin on the ground.

It’s unlikely that the likes of City or Arsenal would be interested in Konoplyanka but Chelsea may well come in with a late move, if for nothing else, to prevent Liverpool from signing a very promising young player, much the same as happened in January.

With other names regularly being linked with Liverpool, it appears that the club and manager are very keen to ensure that a lot of their transfer dealings are completed before the World Cup kicks off in June, in order to give them a free summer to plan for a season which will finally herald the return of Champions League football to Anfield.