Liverpool’s Transfer Regrets: Gerrard on Missed City Duo
Liverpool’s season has been shaped as much by the deals they didn’t do as the ones they did. The reigning Premier League champions sit back in the Champions League places after a 3-1 win over Crystal Palace, but the conversation around Anfield refuses to leave the transfer market alone.
Arne Slot walked into a club that twice smashed the British transfer record last summer in a bold rebuild. New faces, new ideas, a new cycle. Yet as Liverpool scrap to secure their top-four finish, one of the club’s greatest captains keeps coming back to two players who got away.
Gerrard’s frustration at missed City duo
Steven Gerrard has not hidden how much it hurts to watch Marc Guehi and Antoine Semenyo driving Manchester City’s title charge when he believes they should have been wearing red.
The 45-year-old is still chewing over Liverpool’s failure to land the pair in January. Guehi, the former Crystal Palace captain, had been at the centre of a long-running saga and looked on course to join Liverpool as a free agent this coming summer. Semenyo, fresh from an explosive start to the season with Bournemouth, was another name heavily linked with Anfield.
City pounced. They paid a combined £95 million to bring both to the Etihad, a move Gerrard thinks has swung the balance at the top.
“They should be playing for Liverpool, so that hurts even more,” he told TNT Sports. “We were linked with two of those players and that would have made a big difference to Liverpool.
“But I’ve said it before on record. Two top, top players. And for the price that they got them in as well. One on a free. One was, you know, £60million.
“In today’s market, they’re two bargains. They’re two bargains. Quality players, experienced, ready to go into the prime years of their career. International-level players. And what they’ve done is they’ve just helped kick City on at the right time.”
That is the sting for Gerrard. Liverpool, already under pressure in a tight race for Europe, watched two targets slip into the hands of their biggest domestic rival. While Slot has overseen a spirited push to fourth, the sight of Guehi shoring up City’s defence and Semenyo adding thrust to their attack only sharpens the sense of what might have been.
Salah’s farewell and a familiar face in the way
At the other end of Liverpool’s story sits Mohamed Salah, preparing for his Anfield goodbye.
The Egyptian is expected to leave at the end of the season, and the script almost writes itself: a final-day flourish, a farewell goal, the Kop in full voice. One of his former team-mates is quietly plotting to rip that script up.
Caoimhin Kelleher, now at Brentford, could be the man standing between Salah and a perfect send-off if the forward returns to fitness in time for the final game. The 27-year-old goalkeeper has his own ambitions on the line, with the Bees chasing European football.
Kelleher made it clear where his priorities lie when he spoke to The Athletic. He wants the win, the clean sheet, and maybe a word with Salah afterwards.
“Hopefully I’m apologising to him (Salah) after,” the Republic of Ireland international said.
Kelleher left Liverpool last summer in search of regular football, but he still carries the benefit of those years spent facing Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino on a daily basis.
“If you’re making saves off them, that gives you confidence,” he explained. “They were the best in the league. Just to see how they finished and the pace they finish at… you have to get used to it.”
He did get used to it. That education now feeds into Brentford’s European push, while Liverpool lean on Salah one last time to drag them over the line.
As the season edges towards its conclusion, Liverpool are caught between two transfer realities: the stars they nurtured and are about to lose, and the ones they chased but watched City claim. How they navigate those fault lines will shape what comes next at Anfield.
