Liverpool have had two bids rejected for Minteh, and Barcola has now missed three PSG squads

Liverpool want two wingers before the transfer window shuts at 11pm on Tuesday. Both players are gettable. Neither deal is close, and they are stuck for opposite reasons.

Brighton have said no twice

The first bid for Yankuba Minteh was around £50 million, and David Ornstein reported that Brighton turned it down. The second was £60 million and Brighton turned that down as well. What has been briefed since is that they want something nearer £70 million, and Brighton are the last club in England likely to blink at a fortnight of headlines. They got £115 million out of Chelsea for Moises Caicedo in 2023, a British record at the time, and they have been setting their own prices ever since.

The part that makes this one strange is that Minteh cannot play. The 22-year-old Gambia winger had surgery on a right leg injury he picked up in a pre-season friendly against Roma at the Amex, and he is expected to be out for two to three months. Liverpool have spent the last week bidding tens of millions for a player who will not kick a ball for them until October at the earliest.

Whether a third bid is coming depends on which outlet you read, and the split is sharp. Some reported on Monday that Liverpool were readying another offer. Others have said in the last day that the talks have gone cold and that Brighton’s valuation has become the obstacle nobody is going to move. Minteh himself is understood to be open to Anfield if the clubs ever agree a number.

Barcola has missed three PSG squads in a row

Bradley Barcola’s situation runs the other way. The player is pushing, the selling club is not.

Luis Enrique left him out of the squad for Sunday’s trip to Rennes, which PSG drew 2-2. That was the third omission in a row, and the club filed the reason under technical. Ibrahim Mbaye, another forward Liverpool have looked at, has missed the same three squads. Both want out.

Barcola is 23 and under contract to June 2028. He has turned down more than one offer to extend it, which is what put PSG in this position in the first place: sell now, or watch the value bleed away over the next 12 months. Liverpool are reported to have agreed personal terms with him and Arsenal have been circling too.

The fee is the whole argument. Liverpool made a formal offer at the end of July and the reported gap between the two clubs has not closed since. The numbers being printed vary so widely from outlet to outlet, from around 120 million euros to figures well past 150 million, that repeating any one of them would be guesswork rather than reporting.

Why the rush

Mohamed Salah left Anfield as a free agent at the end of last season. That is a lot of goals to replace, and Liverpool have spent the summer linked with most of the wingers in Europe without landing one.

Andoni Iraola arrived from Bournemouth in June to replace Arne Slot and inherited the problem along with the job. His side drew 2-2 at Newcastle on 23 August, a decent away point and also the kind of afternoon a finisher turns into three.

Five days is not long to buy two forwards, and Brighton and PSG can both read a calendar. That is usually when the asking price goes up rather than down.

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