Inter Push for Curtis Jones as Liverpool Faces €35m Dilemma

Inter have returned to the table for Curtis Jones, and this time they are ready to go close to Liverpool’s valuation of the midfielder. The Italian champions, rebuffed with a €25m offer in June, have signalled they are prepared to raise their bid to €35m (£30m) for the 25-year-old.

Liverpool, though, have been holding out for nearer €40m. For a homegrown player, a local symbol and a product of their own academy, the fee is about more than numbers on a balance sheet. It is a statement of how much they are willing to bend in a summer of change.

Inter’s intermediaries made fresh contact with Liverpool this week, outlining the improved proposal and testing the club’s resolve over a player who has only one year left on his contract at Anfield. The clock is ticking. Lose him now for a sizeable fee, or risk watching him walk away for nothing next summer.

The situation is complicated by Jones’s own standing in the squad. He has never quite nailed down a permanent starting role and, under Arne Slot last season, his frustration became harder to hide. He drifted in and out of the XI, a player trusted but not fully installed, important yet not indispensable.

That tension flickered into public view in New York on Wednesday. After Liverpool’s win over Wrexham, Jones became embroiled in a row with Dominik Szoboszlai, apparently over not being given the captain’s armband when the Hungarian was substituted in the second half of the friendly. It was a small moment in a low-stakes game, but it hinted at a player who wants status to match his years of service.

Into that backdrop steps Andoni Iraola. The new head coach has been clear about the value he places on Jones and on maintaining a local core at the start of his tenure. For a manager trying to anchor a new era, letting a boyhood Red walk away in his first window would cut against the identity he is trying to protect.

Yet Inter are not going away. Their determination to land the England international, combined with the financial reality of a contract running down, piles pressure on Liverpool’s stance. Sentiment says keep him. The market, and the calendar, say this might be the last chance to cash in.

Somewhere between €35m and €40m lies the answer to a question Liverpool can no longer dodge: is Curtis Jones part of the next Anfield cycle, or the first big sale of it?