Bradley Barcola. Good player? Great player? Flop? He could be anyone of these, which suggests a degree of panic in Liverpool’s hot chase.
Have the Anfield moneyballers not learned the lesson of a year ago when they splashed a quarter of a billion on Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak, both of whom underwhelmed?
The greater hazard came with Wirtz, given the absence of Premier League experience. Liverpool’s ownership is premised on data-driven recruitment. The holy grail is the conversion of undervalued talent into elite performers. The pursuit of Barcola is manifestly not that.
He is definitely not undervalued at £120m and elite status is questionable when the data shows he is not good enough to start for PSG in big games. That said, “good enough” is a relative concept, especially when you are competing with Khvicha Kvaratskhelia for the left wing berth.
Barcola will face a very different challenge at Liverpool from the one of dominating Ligue 1 (Photo: Frank Fife/AFP via Getty)
