Sourced from Daily Star article
PAUL MERSON COLUMN: Coutinho will ask Liverpool for pay rise, Guardiola can outgun Klopp
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All three of them failed to get the moves they wanted in the window, but that won’t be the end of the story. I find the Coutinho situation a strange one. Barcelona offered them a lot of money and he wanted to go, but Liverpool said no. The trouble is, if you’re valuing him that highly, you’re going to have to give him a new contract to reflect that. His agent will be knocking down their door demanding they give him more than £220,000 a week now. I’m not sure Barcelona will be back in for him. They very rarely get turned down and they don’t like it. His chance might have gone. How he reacts to that we don’t know yet. Besides, he has to get back in the Liverpool team first and they were outstanding against Arsenal without him. The last couple of seasons he’s been in and out for me anyway. When he’s hot, he’s hot. But when he’s cold, he’s very, very cold. I think he will be there until at least the end of the season now. If Barcelona don’t come back in for him, who else is going to offer that price?
Van Dijk is different. He left Celtic to join Southampton to prove himself in the Premier League and get a move to a bigger club. He will have known they are a selling club and that that’s what they do. They’ve sold everyone else. For them not to sell him is a bit hypocritical, a bit childish, in my opinion. I do feel sorry for him. He’s the one player who wanted to go that they didn’t sell. After everything that’s happened, it’s hard to see him coming back into the team easily. It’s gone too far. Liverpool should go back in for him in January because they need him. But Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester City all needed centre-backs in the window too. There could be a lot of clubs in for him come January. If somebody puts a lot of money on the table, Southampton will have to sell. I just think it got petty because they didn’t want to sell to Liverpool after it all came out in public and because of the claims he was tapped up. But I still think that if anybody else had offered £60m or £70m before the window shut, they would have taken it. If there is a question about whether he will play and give 100 per cent for Saints again, you can pretty much guarantee Sanchez will at Arsenal. He’s just the kind of guy who will knuckle down and get on with it. Everyone knows he’ll be leaving at some point, he just has to wait.
He’s not signing a new contract, however much Arsene Wenger says he might. No chance. And he has a right to be unhappy after watching Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain get a move while he’s still stuck at Arsenal. But Manchester City won’t give up on him, and they could probably get him for £10m in January now, which would be an absolute bargain. Arsenal need to let Mesut Ozil go, too. He’s too expensive for what he does and he never influences the big games. You can get better for the price you’d have to pay in terms of his wages. Of all the players who didn’t get a move in the window, I feel the most sorry for Jonny Evans. He’s worked hard to get where he is and he had the chance to go to Arsenal or City, two big clubs, but for whatever reason it didn’t happen. At his age (29), he might not get another chance. MANCHESTER CITY against Liverpool today should be a game with bundles of goals in it – and I think the first team to miss will lose. Both teams have so much attacking talent but can’t defend to save their lives. They only know how to play one way, and will just try to outscore their opponent. All that probably means it will end up being a 0-0 draw, but I don’t think so. I think City will win because their defence is probably a little bit better than Jurgen Klopp’s.
Pep Guardiola keeps changing things around at the back for City. He switched two of his centre-halves against Everton and can’t seem to decide whether it’s a back three or four at the moment. But that’s the one part of the pitch you can’t just keep changing around. Those defenders need to know what they’re doing, what the system is. They need to get used to each other. The thing with City is that they have so many players going forward that if they ever get in trouble they can just throw the cavalry on. It’s frightening. City also ground out a result with 10 men against Everton and ground out a win at Bournemouth as well. But they need to beat Liverpool or questions will be asked.
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