Are Liverpool confident Romeo Lavia will be their player by Gameweek 1 of the Premier League season?
Will the Southampton man sign and be ready to join Jurgen Klopp’s side?
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00:00 Okay. So, Will, just on Liverpool starting, there's a lot going on with Romelu Lavia now.
00:07 Do you think, are you confident they'll get him in before the Premier League season begins?
00:12 Yes, it's rumbled on a lot longer than certainly fans would have hoped for.
00:16 I mean, you look at the Donnach Sir Bozlai deal that came at breakneck speed, really.
00:21 I mean, no one has really mentioned him as a potential target.
00:25 And then, you know, probably took four or five days for the deal to get over the line
00:30 and him to be officially announced.
00:32 So, the Lavia one, obviously, it's a little bit different because maybe Liverpool weren't prioritising signing a defenceman for midfield.
00:40 I think they've always wanted, maybe they wanted a cover for Fabinho, but maybe the £50 million for Lavia,
00:47 they were looking at thinking, well, that's a little bit too much for a 19-year-old at the minute.
00:51 But obviously, with Fabinho and Jordan Henson leaving, that's accelerated the need to get in a new player to fill the void in the number six position.
01:00 So, yeah, it looks like two bigs turned down so far.
01:05 You'd think Liverpool are going to come in with a third one.
01:09 And as you say, they'll want someone through the door for the first game of the season.
01:13 But even if he did come in for the game of the season, would he be ready to start for Liverpool and a Jürgen Klopp team?
01:20 Because he hasn't played an awful lot for Southampton during pre-season.
01:24 I think he's made one start of 45 minutes and then he's had pretty much cameos off the bench in other games,
01:30 which that sort of suggests that Russell Martin isn't planning to have him around the squad,
01:35 which you can understand because, you know, Romelu Lavia, I think, since Southampton relegated, expects he'd be to partner Klopp.
01:42 But as we speak, Southampton have set up late, Jeffrey Wednesday is going to be in the squad.
01:48 And Russell Martin said he'll play his strongest team.
01:50 And you look under that team and he's part of it.
01:53 And same with James Ward, proud to his future's up in the air as well.
01:56 So, personally, maybe Liverpool might be close to getting him over the line before the Chelsea game.
02:04 As we speak, there's nine days.
02:05 There's a lot of water to go under the bridge until then.
02:10 But even if he does arrive, I still don't think he'll be ready to start for Liverpool,
02:16 unfortunately, because he's just not going to be probably fit enough for the demands of Klopp.
02:21 And he hasn't had time to bed him really.
02:23 It might take a few weeks for that to happen.
02:27 But, yeah, obviously the Poole have got ironed in the fire there.
02:30 And, you know, linked with Andre, the Brazilian midfielder, a couple of others still being mentioned, the likes of Ryan Gravenber.
02:39 And so, yeah, what happens between now and the start of the season, we'll be interested to see if Liverpool need someone in.
02:47 But for me, looking at it now, it's not, you know, even if they got someone in the middle of next week, it wouldn't be as important now.
02:56 Because not all the times are really coming and making an impact.
02:59 Not a lot of players do that on the Jürgen Klopp team.