Forgotten €80m Liverpool FLOP linked with shock Everton move | OneFootball

Arthur Melo’s Liverpool career amounted to one appearance and 13 minutes in total as injuries severely affected his move to Merseyside.

The Brazilian midfielder was brought into the club on loan from Juventus back in September 2022, with the Reds paying €4.5 million for the one-season deal with an option to make it permanent for €37.5m.

That was never likely to transpire given the scale of the playmaker’s injury problems and he departed last summer a forgotten man, having NEVER set foot on a Premier League pitch.

The only occasion in which he managed any game time was at the tail end of a 4-1 Champions League defeat away at Napoli.

Arthur, 27, has managed to realign his career this season on another loan, this time to Juve’s fellow Serie A side Fiorentina.

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Last week he scored the goal which guaranteed the Viola’s passage into Europe for next season, a penalty in the 13th minute of injury time against Cagliari that secured a place in the UEFA Europa Conference League playoff round.

Fiorentina will face Olympiakos in the final of the same tournament on Wednesday with Arthur hoping to secure continental silverware for his side.

There is an option for Fiorentina to make his Juventus loan permanent for a fee of around €20m but the club are not willing to sign him full time.

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Reports in Italy suggest Arthur’s salary is too high for a permanent deal, described by La Gazzetta dello Sport as €5.5m plus bonuses.

Fiorentina paid €2m for this season’s loan deal but only took on a portion of the ex-Gremio player’s salary and they are unable to match his contract demands.

That means he will return to Juventus unsure of his next move, having joined the club from Barcelona back in 2020 for a fee of up to €80m.

Miralem Pjanic went the other way as part of an unusual swap deal but Juve never really extracted the value out of Arthur during his spell at the club.

Arthur is out of contract in Turin in 2026 and is not expected to be called upon by the incoming Juventus coach Thiago Motta next season - a man who was also a candidate for the Liverpool hotseat.

And now Gazzetta reports that Napoli along with two Premier League clubs are watching Arthur’s situation with interest.

West Ham are mentioned and more intriguingly Everton have been suggested as a potential destination.

The Toffees are in severe financial difficulty owing to a botched 777 Partners takeover and it remains to be seen whether they would have the means to pull off such a deal.

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