\n<\/p>\n
Mo Salah, much like another cog in the Jurgen Klopp machine, was not the first-choice signing at Liverpool. Some Plan Bs work out rather well.<\/p>\n
While missing out on a priority target can be frustrating, it can sometimes represent a dodged bullet with an alternative proving to be phenomenal.<\/p>\n
Liverpool have had a couple of notable examples down the years, as have Manchester United.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There is an alternate reality in which Frey has a statue dedicated to him outside Emirates Stadium. The Frenchman is depicted sprawling at the feet of Samuel Eto\u2019o to intercept a sumptuous Ronaldinho pass and launch the thrilling Arsenal counter-attack from which Robert Pires opened the scoring in the 2006 Champions League final.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an ambitious piece, granted.<\/p>\n
A comically long-running transfer saga<\/strong> almost reached its merciful conclusion in 2003 when, in their search for a David Seaman replacement, Arsenal considered Frey after he had established himself as one of Serie A\u2019s most reliable performers at Parma.<\/p>\n He proved too expensive, however, and the Gunners were back to square one.<\/p>\n Arsene Wenger, reluctant to actually recognise the existence of Graham Stack \u2013 while noting that \u201ceven Stuart Taylor accepts that maybe he is still a bit too young to lead the team for a whole season\u201d \u2013 instead settled for a short-term solution that ended up lasting four seasons.<\/p>\n Lehmann joined aged 33, became an Invincible, won the FA Cup and earned the first red card in <\/span>Champions League final history<\/strong>. Not bad for a stop-gap.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is ultimately just really fun to transpose the entire career enjoyed by the transfer Plan B onto the Plan A the club wished to sign instead.<\/p>\n Berahino captaining Spurs to a Europa League final victory over Manchester United<\/strong> in his last of 454 games is the alternate timeline Daniel Levy wanted desperately enough as to make three bids ranging between \u00a315m and \u00a323m for the West Brom forward.<\/p>\n The Baggies did not relent, even through the forward\u2019s strike threat<\/strong>. Berahino returned in body but never spirit, scoring 40 times in a decade after summer 2015 across spells at eight different clubs. Son reached that goal tally for Spurs by February 2018 and went on to rack up 173 to sit fourth on their all-time scorers list.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2018Douglas Hall had been the real instigator behind Alan\u2019s shock signing,\u2019 wrote Terry McDermott, former assistant to Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, of the world-record signing of Shearer in his 2017 autobiography.<\/p>\n \u2018If he had something in his mind he would try to deliver. Sometimes his ideas were a bit over the top, but he would still try to go for it. He tried once to sign the top Italian striker Roberto Baggio. We arrived unannounced at Juventus and knocked on the door. Douglas said: \u201cI\u2019m Douglas Hall of Newcastle United in England. Who do I speak to in order to sign Roberto Baggio?\u201d The Juve official told him there was no-one at the club available to talk about Baggio and, in any case, he was not for sale. So Douglas and the rest of us had to slope out of the ground and head back to Turin Airport.<\/p>\n \u2018Not to be defeated, Douglas wondered whether we could now find the money to try to sign Alan Shearer.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In Juve\u2019s defence, it was probably quite confusing to field interest in a player they had sold a year prior to Newcastle settling for Shearer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cHow can I leave after a night like this?\u201d asked Steven Gerrard on the Ataturk Stadium pitch in the early hours of a May morning in 2005. It was a rhetorical question Liverpool unnecessarily sought to answer for him over the course of that summer. Chelsea tested choppy waters with a British record \u00a332m bid in July. The Liverpool rejection was prompt but <\/span>Gerrard\u2019s response no less so<\/strong>: the midfielder turned down a \u00a3100,000-a-week contract extension and declared his intention to leave for Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n The following day, he signed a new deal to commit his future to Anfield, stating: \u201cI\u2019ve only one medal left to win at Liverpool and that\u2019s the Premiership. Liverpool is the only place I\u2019ve ever wanted to win it.\u201d<\/p>\n That bloody slip<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Chelsea took the setback well. They had courted Essien of Lyon for months but crystallised their interest when Gerrard became unavailable.<\/p>\n At the former\u2019s official unveiling, Mourinho even responded to a question about which midfielder he would have preferred by simply responding: \u201cMaybe I could have had both.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Steven Capulet and Jose Montague have been fluttering eyelashes, exchanging messages and sharing a forbidden footballing love for years. Mourinho\u2019s \u201cfavourite enemy\u201d has developed something of a taste for playing hard to get with <\/span>his \u201cdream\u201d manager<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The only problem was that Real Madrid wanted Gerrard, in the midfielder\u2019s own words, \u201cto cause a war at Liverpool to get out\u201d in 2010. Mourinho had reportedly identified him as a priority in his first summer at the Bernabeu but it was not to be.<\/p>\n \u2018Real Madrid are closing in on the \u00a38.5million signing of Stuttgart midfielder Sami Khedira amid cooling interest in Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard,\u2019 said <\/span>a Daily Mail article <\/span>that July, in which Gerrard was described as the Spanish club\u2019s \u2018primary target\u2019 with an off-putting \u00a335m valuation.<\/p>\n Khedira was certainly a less spectacular signing, but a La Liga title, two Copas del Rey and La Decima qualifies as an undoubted success.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n For the middle portion of his nine years at Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp was spoiled.<\/p>\n Where once he naturally <\/span>accepted alternatives <\/span>if his first choice was unattainable \u2013 Sadio Mane instead of Ousmane Dembele and Mario Gotze; Andy Robertson over Ben Chilwell; Steven Caulker as a Plan B to Alex Teixeira \u2013 their best period coincided with the German rarely settling, even if it meant waiting a few extra months for Virgil van Dijk after a grovelling apology and slap on the wrists<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Yet one of Klopp\u2019s best signings was not his initial preference, if reports are to be believed. It was claimed by the wholly unbiased Slovenian media in October 2018 that Liverpool made an \u2018important offer\u2019 for Oblak the previous summer, only for the goalkeeper to turn them down and leave the Reds with the consolation prize of Alisson.<\/p>\n For what it\u2019s worth, Klopp seemed to reference a vague interest in Oblak around the time Alisson arrived for <\/span>\u201ccrazy money\u201d<\/strong>. It was a choice with no real wrong answer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The same cannot be said for what was quite the internal wrangle between Salah and Brandt.<\/p>\n Klopp favoured the latter, while the air-conditioned laptop guru nerds<\/strong> felt the former represented far better value for money with a much higher ceiling.<\/p>\n This current season is on track to be Salah\u2019s worst at Liverpool by far with ten goals in 34 games. Brandt has only once outscored that \u2013 in the 2017\/18 campaign after turning the Reds down to stay at Bayer Leverkusen in a World Cup year<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The German will be leaving Borussia Dortmund on a free transfer this summer, but is somehow not included among Salah\u2019s best replacements<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI thought we\u2019d clinched the deal, but when I flew to Paris to speak with him, the goalposts seemed to have moved somehow. It was a big disappointment at the time, but we signed Cristiano Ronaldo that very same summer and perhaps we wouldn\u2019t have ended up with Ronaldo had we got Ronaldinho.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sir Alex Ferguson will always be grateful for the apparent divine intervention of Ronaldinho\u2019s \u201cpeople\u201d in summer 2003. Wanting to emphatically replace David Beckham, Manchester United entered Paris Saint-Germain\u2019s unequivocally non-silent auction for the Brazilian, with Barcelona winning the \u00a321m ballot as, in the words of PSG president Francis Graille, United had \u201cbeen too sure of themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI really thought the manager got him,\u201d Paul Scholes would later recall<\/strong>probably on a podcast, probably with Nicky Butt, before revealing that United spent a subsequent pre-season friendly against Barca \u201ctrying to boot\u201d Ronaldinho for the rejection.<\/p>\n Ronaldo proved to be a decent back-up.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n But that transfer web was multi-layered. United and Barcelona only battled for Ronaldinho after the latter failed to sign Beckham from the former.<\/p>\n It was a peculiar situation, unbecoming of Premier League champions. United took the unusual step of officially announcing that a \u00a325m deal to sell Beckham to Barca had been agreed in principle, contingent on Joan Laporta winning the upcoming Nou Camp presidential election and, well, Beckham actually negotiating personal terms, never mind agreeing them.<\/p>\n \u201cDavid is very disappointed and surprised to learn of the club\u2019s statement,\u201d was the response of Beckham\u2019s agency. \u201cDavid\u2019s advisers have no plans to meet Mr Laporta or his representatives.\u201d<\/p>\n His heart was set on Madrid, not a troubled Barca side that had barely scraped into the UEFA Cup first round. But Laporta had achieved his objective in shooting for the moon and landing among the stars. He had, after all, promised Beckham, Thierry Henry or Ronaldinho as part of his successful manifesto. The Brazilian was by far the easiest to deliver, particularly behind the Beckham smokescreen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Depending on which source you believe, Ferguson might have scanned past as many as four names before scrawling Cantona\u2019s on a note for Martin Edwards in November 1992.<\/p>\n It is common knowledge that David Hirst was targeted, while moves for Matt Le Tissier, Brian Deane and Alan Shearer were mooted then and since.<\/p>\n \u201cDion Dublin broke his leg against Palace,\u201d Ferguson himself said in 2013. \u201cSo we started scouring about trying to get someone in. Peter Beardsley wasn\u2019t really playing for Everton at the time so I went to Martin Edwards\u2019 office.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was in there the phone went, it was Bill Fotherby from Leeds asking if we\u2019d sell Denis Irwin. During the call I wrote Cantona\u2019s name on his pad. They said they would come back to us in half an hour. Half an hour to discuss a player like Cantona? Something like that should have taken five days. I knew there was something up and they came back to us and said they\u2019d sell him for \u00a31million. We signed him the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n To think, the dominant team of the early Premier League era might never have established themselves as such had Dublin not broken his leg, Sheffield Wednesday just accepted a \u00a33m offer or Leeds not <\/span>underestimated the brilliance\u00a0of Denis bloody Irwin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n9) Heung-min Son (instead of Saido Berahino, Spurs)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
8) Alan Shearer (instead of Roberto Baggio, Newcastle)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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7) Michael Essien (instead of Steven Gerrard, Chelsea)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n6) Sami Khedira (instead of Steven Gerrard, Real Madrid)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
5) Alisson (instead of Jan Oblak, Liverpool)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
4) Mo Salah (instead of Julian Brandt, Liverpool)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
3) Cristiano Ronaldo (instead of Ronaldinho, Manchester United)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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2) Ronaldinho (instead of David Beckham, Barcelona)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1) Eric Cantona (instead of plenty of players, Manchester United)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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