Liverpool to move for NEW striker targets | OneFootball

The Reds' need for a new striker is well understood by now; Diogo Jota cannot be relied upon and Darwin Nunez's days on Merseyside are numbered, his time at Liverpool has been a big mismatch.

At times, Luis Diaz has been shoehorned into a hybrid centre-forward role in order to create another option for Arne Slot to experiment with. This summer, a new No. 9 is an integral piece of business.

However, the last few weeks of the season, and this 10-day mini transfer window has so far been dominated by talk of a right-back, a left-back and a new attacking midfielder.

Jeremie Frimpong from Leverkusen is a deal that has already been finalised, meanwhile Milos Kerkez at Bournemouth and Florian Wirtz at Leverkusen are both in the process of serious negotiations.

But this should not mean that Liverpool are not still conscious of the squad's other transfer needs and when the main transfer window opens on June 17 for 39 days, the focus will change once again.

© IMAGO - Liverpool's striker options this summer, Victor Osimhen, Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike.

A striker is next on the club's shopping list

In response to the question 'will we [Liverpool] go big on a striker?', Lewis Steele at Mail Sport gave us an update on his intel about the club's summer transfer plans.

He said: "The noise in the last week has been that after wrapping up the [Florian] Wirtz deal, Liverpool will turn their attention to targeting a No. 9 and [a] defender. Hugo Ekitike is the name that crops up the most, but Chelsea are also in that race despite the fact they are signing Liam Delap.

"The No. 9 market is not an easy one to shop in and I would expect more names to emerge in the next weeks if they do decide to press forward with buying one. But to sign a striker this summer, they would certainly have to sell some players including a certain No. 9 [Darwin Nunez]."

As such, while there has been speculation about different targets, Liverpool have no yet paid much attention to negotiating a deal for one, although they will have already laid the groundwork for a deal.

Much of the work behind the scenes in the recruitment department during the season will have been spent on identifying targets, visiting clubs to understand conditions for plausible offers and allocating funds to different areas of Arne Slot's squad that are in need of improvement.

So far only one sale has been made in Caoimhin Kelleher for a possible £18.5m to Brentford, although the club also received £10m for Trent Alexander-Arnold to be let go from his contract a month early.

And it is true that other players will need to be sold to facilitate further business. If £125m is to be sanctioned for Wirtz alongside a suspected £45m for Kerkez and £29.6m for Frimpong, then funds might be running dry, although expectations of a 'heavyweight summer' have be proven right so far.

In terms of who the incoming striker could be, Liverpool's interest in Hugo Etitike from Eintracht Frankfurt has been well-documented and Viktor Gyokeres at Sporting looks to be a plausible move for Liverpool to make, given his prolific goalscoring record and his reasonable £55m release clause.

However, other targets have been linked over the past few months and the ambiguity that 'other names will emerge in the next weeks' is sure to create intrigue. In the blink of an eye, players you might previously have been unaware of could be reportedly featuring high up on the club's radar.

It's an exciting time to be a Liverpool fan and the summer has only just begun.