Jamie Carragher has suggested that Liverpool didn’t buy Arsenal forward Nicolas Pepe due to his position.
It was the Gunners who managed to prize the Ivorian international away from Lille after a breakthrough season in France, with Get French Football News reporting that a potential move to the Reds collapsed over game time.
Speaking on Sky Sports after the Liverpool v Arsenal game as quoted by Football.London, Carragher seemed to have a different take on the forward’s summer of speculation.
“Nicolas Pepe normally plays right-hand side, coming inside on his left,” he said.
“That’s why Liverpool never took him.”
Carragher made the suggestion that Pepe is a similar type of player to Mohamed Salah, and would operate in the same way as the Egyptian if he moved to Anfield in the summer.
OPINION
Pepe looked very dangerous in spells for Arsenal in Saturday’s game, and caused the Reds plenty of problems throughout the game, and should have opened the scoring for Unai Emery’s side. Liverpool took more of a cautious start to the game, similar to their transfer window, with Jurgen Klopp deciding not to splash the cash on any player, but instead look into younger and cheaper options. The German brought in Harvey Elliott as his most attacking player, as he looks to be dependant on his prolific front-three with Divock Origi as cover once again. The 24-year-old Arsenal attacker has already averaged 1.7 shots per game as well as completing 1.3 key passes and 3.7 dribbles according to WhoScored, stats that Liverpool fans would have loved to have seen. Yes, Liverpool missed out but to suggest that it is because of which wing he plays on is surely wrong, with other reports simply suggesting that Klopp didn’t want to invest so much on a player who wouldn’t play as much as he would like.
