For a year, the new contracts kept coming. The feared front three all signed, and both full-backs.
Virgil van Dijk put pen to paper, along with Joe Gomez and Joel Matip. Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain committed their futures.
It meant that, as Liverpool’s all-conquering team were being rewarded, one by one, Georginio Wijnaldum was next. He still is, after youngsters Curtis Jones and Neco Williams have had their deals upgraded, three months after a supposed breakthrough in talks, 10 from the end of his contract.
An impasse increases the possibility one of Jurgen Klopp’s flagship successes, a player plucked from relegated Newcastle United to become the most-used midfielder for European and English champions, could be the exception to the rule, the one who does not stay together.
Liverpool’s muted approach to the transfer market is in part because much of their energy and resources have been committed to keeping the team they assembled.
All bar Wijnaldum; every regular except him and the 34-year-old Milner is tied down until at least 2023.
He is the unexpected anomaly, a footballer valued by Klopp even when the wider world sometimes assumed he was surplus to requirements.
Go back to 2018 and Wijnaldum was tipped to leave when Liverpool signed Naby Keita and Fabinho. Klopp did not consider letting him go. Wijnaldum has only missed four league games since then.
Likeable and low-maintenance, he has often escaped attention. Until now, which highlights unexpected developments at two of Europe’s superclubs.
Wijnaldum helped hasten the end of an era at Barcelona, his brace at Anfield in the 2019 Champions League semi-final illustrating an ageing team could not cope with Liverpool’s pace.
The appointment of Ronald Koeman, who has made him more prolific for his country than his club during his days as Holland manager, has taken an admirer to the Camp Nou at a time when Barcelona need an overhaul.
Wijnaldum’s links with Koeman date back to when Erwin, Ronald’s brother, gave him his Feyenoord debut at 16.
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Liverpool 2019/20 player ratings
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Meanwhile, the sudden availability of Thiago Alcantara offers a ready-made replacement; one who, with a year left on his Bayern Munich contract, is in a similar situation.
It is unlike Liverpool to spend heavily on a 29-year-old, but Bayern believe they will submit a bid. “It looks like he will leave us,” CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said this week. “I expect an offer in the next few days.” The Spaniard would reportedly love to play for Klopp.
The question is if Klopp wants to alter a winning formula, or indeed if he feels he needs to inject another dimension to his midfield: Wijnaldum has been essential to Liverpool’s unique blueprint, where the full-backs advance beyond the midfielders and provide more of the creativity.
Wijnaldum has not recorded an assist in either the Premier or the Champions League for two years, but he is charged with knitting a team together and covering gaps.
He is remarkably accurate in possession, completing 91 per cent of passes in the last two seasons in the Premier League, and sometimes those figures are still higher in major matches. He is trusted as a big-game player.
Thiago should bring similar metronomic reliability but offers the promise of more incision.
Klopp often benches his high-speed runners in favour of his most solid trio in midfield, especially against elite opponents, but Thiago is likelier to play a defence-splitting pass than any of them and a reliance on the full-backs’ crossing was highlighted in the Community Shield when the injured Trent Alexander-Arnold was missed.
Perhaps Wijnaldum will be sacrificed in the quest to evolve. Or maybe a saga will end with the most understated of Liverpool’s regulars signing after an increasingly strange delay.
