Liverpool appear to have been dealt a significant blow to their chances of landing one reported transfer target.
Prominent among the list of names to have been linked with the Reds this month is Milos Kerkez, with both Fabrizio Romano and Paul Joyce claiming that the Bournemouth left-back is of interest at Anfield.
The i Paper even reported that the 21-year-old would prefer a move to Merseyside over the two Manchester clubs, both of whom had also contacted his representatives, although fresh doubt has now been cast over that stance by the player himself.
Kerkez insists he won’t join Liverpool
The Hungary international hosted a livestream on his official YouTube channel in which he responded to comments from viewers.
When one subscriber urged him to leave Bournemouth for Liverpool, Kerkez replied: “I will not go to Liverpool. For everybody listening, I will not go to Liverpool.”
Kerkez would take some convincing over Liverpool move
The message from the Hungarian left-back seems to be quite clear – he won’t be swapping the Vitality Stadium for Anfield any time soon.
It comes as a setback for the Premier League leaders with only nine days to go in the January transfer window, which has yet to see any new faces come through the door to bolster Arne Slot’s squad.
Left-back is the one position that many supporters want to see strengthened, with Andy Robertson enduring a drop in his usual standards since the start of the season but still playing substantially more minutes than Kostas Tsimikas.
Maybe it was simply a case of Kerkez not wanting to rock the boat and reiterating his commitment to Bournemouth, although there wasn’t any explicit mention of that in his words on the livestream, but rather an insistence that a move to Liverpool is off the cards.
That alone mightn’t completely deter Richard Hughes if he’s adamant that the 21-year-old is a player that he and Slot very much want at Anfield, but it does seem that it’d require some exceptional powers of persuasion to entice the Cherries defender to L4.
