Liverpool (Apparently) Drop Out of Jude Bellingham Race: A Watershed Moment

After less than 48 hours where reports of Liverpool submitting a £84 million offer for Judge Bellingham surfaced, it’s now being reported everywhere that Liverpool have (apparently) dropped completely out of the race to sign him.

Liverpool fans are losing their minds everywhere, and I’d argue, for good reason.

There’s multiple ways to look at this, and all have valid points.

From my point of view, I’ll say this:

The only way Liverpool FC should fail to sign Jude Bellingham is by going the distance, breaking their bank (to a reasonable degree), and then Bellingham chooses another team in the end.

For us not to even be at the table, this early, is frankly pathetic and embarrassing.

This is a watershed moment for the owners, FSG.

Allow me to elaborate: everyone and their grandma know Bellingham likes Liverpool.

He hangs out with Jordan Henderson and Trent Alexander-Arnold in the England camp. He looks up to Henderson as a captain. His idol is Steven Gerrard. He was spotted with Alexander-Arnold at a concert recently. While none of these are guarantees, there are ingredients and signs sprinkled everywhere.

He looks every bit worth the money, and like a once-in-a-generation player.

My thoughts on some viewpoints:

1. “This is just a tactic from FSG, they’ve done it before – they’re trying to drive the price down.” -> I sure hope so. This is the best case scenario right now.
   
   
2. “Liverpool need multiple midfielders – better to buy 3 midfielders with 150 million then one midfielder” -> Uh…if you give me the option of one superstar midfielder vs 3 decent ones, I’d go for the superstar 10 times out of 10. Especially when, apparently, the focus is now instead to acquire Mason Mount (LOL). Good footballer, but my God, what a drop off. He’s not even a midfielder exactly, let’s be honest.
   
   Spending heavily on Bellingham and signing 2 dirt cheap, “never heard of him” type midfield players is better than signing 3 average, decent midfielders in my eyes.
   
   
3. “Liverpool realized they can’t afford how high the Bellingham fee will be” -> Utter nonsense. We, and the whole world, knew he would be well over $100 million for about 2 years now. You’re telling me FSG just realized that?
   
   Furthermore, it was the worst kept secret that we tried to sign Aurelien Tchouameni last year, who opted to sign for Madrid in the end. Then, we opted NOT to sign any midfielders the whole year (don’t get me started on Arthur).
   
   It’s become a Catch-22. We struggled all year, with midfield being the biggest problem, and the understanding was we’re just going to save all the money to go all in on Bellingham. Now, it’s being spun as, oh we should instead sign more serviceable midfielders. We wouldn’t need to do that, had we signed one or two in the past couple of years, to refresh the squad. You know, basic squad transitioning and all.
   

I want to hold judgement until it becomes clear who (and how many) we actually sign in midfield, but right now, if it’s true that Liverpool are out of the Bellingham race, it’s a sad and frustrating day for LFC fans. How far we have fallen.

Not only is qualifying for Champions League a pipe dream right now, but our back office is a mess too. Come on LFC, let’s get out sh*t together. The only person/reason (outside of players) I think we would have any chance at still getting Bellingham, is Jürgen Klopp. I think he still holds a lot of allure. A little push from Gerrard wouldn’t hurt either.