After letting Marc Guehi slip through their grasp, Liverpool’s transfer Plan B must emerge

Manchester City are on the brink of signing long-term Liverpool target Marc Guehi – so what should the Reds do now in transfer window?

It doesn’t require a great stretch of the imagination to picture Marc Guehi in a Liverpool shirt. After all, the England international was mere minutes away from being confirmed a Reds player on transfer deadline day back in September when Crystal Palace pulled the plug on an initial £35million deal.

Liverpool were ready to go in for Guehi again once he became a free agent in the summer. That, though, now appears off the table with Manchester City having agreed a £20m transfer for the 25-year-old in response to their centre-back injury crisis.

So, have the Reds missed a trick by not moving for Guehi this month? And do they actually need to sign a central defender in the January transfer window? Our Liverpool FC correspondent Paul Gorst and chief Liverpool FC writer Ian Doyle offer their opinions…

Paul Gorst

At Liverpool, the idea of refusing to panic or being too reactive to the developments over form and fitness when it comes to transfer business has long been established.

For a club who often try to plan as meticulously as possible in their squad building, being forced into hurried, expensive deals flies in the face of their entire ethos, particularly on the watch of Michael Edwards, the former sporting director who is now the de facto head of the club as Fenway Sports Group’s CEO of football.

It’s why the best-laid plans to sign Marc Guehi on transfer deadline day are not being revisited in January. Liverpool agreed a package worth around £35m on September 1, only to see the rug pulled from under them when Crystal Palace opted to keep their captain for the season ahead. Or rather, as it has now transpired, four months.

Those four months have seemingly cost Palace around £15m as Guehi gets set to now move to Manchester City for a reported fee of just £20m. For Liverpool, that might still have represented an exorbitant outlay for someone who would have been a free agent at the end of June. The vantage point from the Etihad, however, is much different.

Now it is Pep Guardiola’s City who have stolen the march and feel they are signing a 25-year-old England international at a relative pittance. In that sense, it represents shrewd business and the speed at which they have moved for Guehi has been dizzying. It’s been proactive, front-footed and aggressive, leaving Liverpool to now assess the lay of the land elsewhere.

Eye-watering wages have been discussed as a reason for Liverpool’s reluctance to join the race and given the player himself had a medical with the Reds in London just a few months ago, the pay hike offered by his new employers must have been considerable. City’s comfort with paying the sort of agents’ fees that would have been the going rate had Guehi been out of contract has also been mooted.

But for a club who have just three senior centre-backs who are all, to varying degrees, facing uncertainty over their long-term future at Liverpool, Guehi would have at least represented surety for the coming years.

Ultimately, it can be argued that Guehi would only have come in to contest Ibrahima Konate for a place in the backline alongside club captain Virgil van Dijk and there is no sense internally that a ‘slam-dunk’ capture – to use Jurgen Klopp’s phrase – has slipped through their grasp.

But if Liverpool are happy to allow City a free run at the Eagles skipper, there must be a Plan B for the summer months. As the old maxim of the boxing promoter goes: If you can’t get ’em on the card, the replacement must be better. The search for whoever that is begins now.

Ian Doyle

There’s absolutely no doubt that Liverpool missing out on a long-term transfer target – let alone one they agreed a deal with just months earlier – to a direct Premier League rival is not a good look.

And it’s those optics that prompted an immediate fume from the emotive sections of the online fanbase and furrowed brows among more considered supporters.

For a club that is going to require major reconstruction work at centre-back in the not-too-distant future, allowing a talent like Marc Guehi to slip from their grasp will lead to accusations of a dereliction of duty.

But scratch beneath the surface of the reported £20million fee agreed between Manchester City and Crystal Palace for the England international and it’s not difficult to see why the transfer is being realised.

City’s desperation for reinforcements given their centre-back injury crisis has prompted them, if claims are to be believed, to offer Guehi in the region of £300,000 a week to move to the Etihad.

Such a salary would have instantly made Guehi one of the best-paid players in the Liverpool squad. And while moneybags City have no issue splashing out, that’s not so easy for the Reds.

And it’s not just Liverpool. Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Chelsea and, if rumours are true, Arsenal have all been looking at Guehi and were ready to move in the summer. None considered the wage City have offered.

If Guehi really wanted to come to Liverpool, he could have stood firm at Palace and then made the move in the summer. He’d still have been paid a decent whack.

Nobody, though, can blame him too much for having his head turned by the mammoth offer from City and the more immediate prospect of success, given the manner in which the season has thus far played out.

Liverpool will already have moved on. But the failure to get a deal for Guehi done has only increased the pressure on ensuring they bolster their centre-back resources in sufficient fashion in the summer.