Three reasons why Liverpool should avoid James Maddison

He’s overpriced

Put simply, there is no way Liverpool should be spending north of £70 million to sign the attacker. It wouldn’t be madness, but it’s a massive amount of money to throw at a position that isn’t a problem for the club and that doesn’t need reinforcing.

There would certainly be a homegrown premium attached to Maddison’s fee as a good, English player in the squad is very useful for hitting those quotas. This is the reality top flight club have had to live with for some time now, but it doesn’t make the inflation any less real – and in this case it makes it worse.

This is a footballer who has displayed some very fine flashes, of course he has, and Klopp saw first hand what he can do when Leicester played us at Anfield. But is he a £70 million player? It’s hard to argue that you’d be happy with your club spending that much money on him.

That cost would put a lot of pressure on the kid and label him as one of the best players in the world right now. That’s big for someone without a senior international cap to his name (at the time of writing).