Philippe Coutinho: The case for and against selling him to Barcelona
By David Gate
The Case Against Selling Coutinho
The biggest reason we shouldn’t sell Philippe Coutinho is that he is very, very good at football. He is our best player, though Sadio Mane is challenging that. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we don’t have an abundance of world class talent. We are not like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or even Manchester City. There aren’t scores elite players lining our bench. We have Ragnar Klavan and Marko Grujic.
Selling your best player is demoralizing. It casts a cloud over both the dressing room and the fanbase. It makes everything feel like one step forward, two steps back; slowing progress and regressing the development of the squad.
We only just scraped into the Champions League places last year. Losing Coutinho puts us further behind our rivals; all except Tottenham have made significant improvements.
The timing is horrible. There is not enough time before the window closes to highlight targets, move on them and integrate them into the team. If, of course, we were even capable of doing that. We have missed all but one of our major targets this summer. There is very little trust in the fanbase that we could successfully spend Coutinho’s fee. Even if it were a £1 billion.
Keeping Coutinho is a sign that we believe we can be great again. It is a demonstration that we believe we can win this year. Mount a title challenge and progress in the Champions League. Letting go of Coutinho says to the fans “not this year”.
Jamie Carragher predicted there would be “riots” if we sold Coutinho. After a disappointing summer in the transfer window, for many fans, it would be the last straw.