Bajcetic and Ramsay: Liverpool's Changing Guard

Liverpool’s changing of the guard is gathering pace – and for two once-promising youngsters, Anfield now looks like a chapter closing rather than one just beginning.

Bajcetic edging towards emotional Celta Vigo return

Stefan Bajcetic arrived at Liverpool as a teenager with the future mapped out in red. The club moved quickly in December 2020, paying Celta Vigo £224,000 to lift the then 16-year-old from their academy and drop him into one of Europe’s most demanding midfields.

By 2022/23, it looked a masterstroke. Jurgen Klopp trusted him in big moments, the Spain Under-21 midfielder racking up 19 appearances and earning a new long-term contract. He was being talked about as the next long-term piece in Liverpool’s engine room.

Then the momentum stalled.

A string of niggling injuries checked his rise, and the rhythm vanished. Since May 2024, Bajcetic has not played a single competitive game for Liverpool. Instead, his development has been scattered across loan spells – first at Red Bull Salzburg, then at Las Palmas during the 2024/25 campaign.

Now the story is looping back to where it began.

According to Faro de Vigo, Celta Vigo have moved him to the top of their list and are actively working on bringing him home, six years after he first left Galicia for Merseyside. The local outlet describes Bajcetic as “closer than ever to returning home” and makes it clear: Celta want him back.

There is, however, one crucial condition.

Celta need Liverpool to rip up the final year of his contract if the deal is to happen. No fee, no negotiation over add-ons – a straight termination to free him up for a return to LaLiga.

Liverpool, the report suggests, are weighing it up. The club know they are unlikely to draw a significant transfer fee for a player whose progress has stalled and whose contract is running down. One solution on the table is a clean break now, with a future sell-on clause attached to protect Liverpool’s interests if Bajcetic reignites his career back in Spain.

For a midfielder once earmarked as part of Liverpool’s next generation, the decision now looks stark: fight for a place he has not held for more than a year, or go back to Celta and rebuild in familiar surroundings.

Ramsay’s fifth loan spells the end of his Liverpool stay

On the opposite flank, another quiet departure underlines just how ruthless the reset under new head coach Andoni Iraola is becoming.

Calvin Ramsay was supposed to be Trent Alexander-Arnold’s understudy, the £4.2m signing from Aberdeen in June 2022 seen as a smart, long-term option at right-back. The idea was clear: push Alexander-Arnold, cover him, maybe even mirror his evolution in time.

It never materialised.

Ramsay has managed just four first-team appearances for Liverpool. Injuries, form and the sheer level required at Anfield combined to shut the door almost as soon as it opened. The Scotland international, capped once by his country, slipped into the loan carousel.

• Preston
• Bolton
• Wigan
• Kilmarnock

– all temporary homes, none of them a true breakthrough. Across those spells he has totalled only 26 appearances, with his most productive stint the 12 games he managed for Wigan in the 2024/25 season.

Now comes loan number five, and it feels definitive.

Liverpool have confirmed that Ramsay, 21, has joined St Mirren on a season-long loan. He is into the final year of his Anfield contract, and there is no option to buy included in the deal. On paper, it is a simple temporary move. In reality, it all but signals the end of his Liverpool career.

For St Mirren, it is a calculated gamble on a player who once looked destined for much more. For Ramsay, it is a lifeline. A chance, in Paisley, to reclaim the trajectory that took him from Aberdeen to one of the biggest clubs in the world.

Liverpool, meanwhile, move on. Bajcetic could be cut loose with a safety net of a sell-on clause, Ramsay is effectively playing out his final year elsewhere, and Iraola continues to trim a squad that is being reshaped with little room for sentiment.

The message from Anfield is clear: promise alone is no longer enough.