Inside failed Nabil Fekir transfer and how Liverpool got lucky with narrow £52m escape for Coutinho replacement

Wind back to 2018, and Liverpool spent more heavily in the transfer market than they ever had before. Backed in part by the £143m deal that had seen Philippe Coutinho move to Barcelona six months earlier - though £75m of that had already been splashed on Virgil van Dijk - Liverpool then went and signed Alisson Becker, Fabinho, Naby Keita and Xherdan Shaqiri for a combined total of around £170m. But they could very easily have spent another £52m, having been minutes away from a transfer being announced for French attacking midfielder Nabil Fekir. So, for this special podcast, Matt Addison is joined by Kristian Walsh, who was working on the Liverpool ECHO's sports desk at the time, Spanish football writer Andrew Miller, who specialises in Real Betis, the club that Fekir plays for now, and finally Jonathan Johnson, a French football expert who gives the view from Lyon, as they explain why the deal collapsed, and how that has impacted the player himself and Liverpool since. Certainly, Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool could have taken a very different path had they pressed ahead with a move for the number 10...

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