21-year-old completes move

Liverpool have completed a move for Tony Gallacher.

The 21-year-old left-back has moved to Toronto FC on loan, the MLS club announced, where he’ll compete for a role in the side with Justin Morrow.

After signing for Liverpool from Falkirk, the Glasgow native has made just one appearance for the first team and will surely welcome the chance to play first team football for the first time in two years.

Tony Gallacher has a pretty interesting backstory as he made his professional debut nearly five years ago in a 4-1 win over Fraserburgh in the SFA Cup.

He then played 11 Scottish Championship games for Falkirk, before Liverpool were alerted to his progress and paid £205,000 to sign the Scotland U19 international.

However, it was slim pickings on Merseyside and Gallacher was only able to make his debut for the Reds during that weird Aston Villa clash in the Carabao Cup. Most of the first team were away in Qatar playing the Club World Cup, and Liverpool were forced to field a side that included no senior players.

The only ones with any first team experience during that game, which ended up being a 5-0 win to Villa, where Pedro Chirivella, Herbie Kane, Sepp van den Berg and Ki-Jana Hoever; hardly elder statesmen.

Now Gallacher moves with only three more games left in the MLS season, pending a relaxation in travel protocol. As things stand, Toronto will play DC United, New York City and Columbus Crew before the end of September – while more fixtures may be arranged in the future.

It’s a fairly unusual set of circumstances and hopefully it won’t be detrimental to the left-back’s progression. It seems pointless to loan a player for just a handful of games, so perhaps Toronto and Liverpool are feeling more confident about the possibility of extra MLS matches being arranged.

Gallacher joins Sheyi Ojo (Cardiff), Morgan Boyes (Fleetwood Town) and Adam Lewis (Amiens) out on loan, while Ben Woodburn should be heading to Sparta Rotterdam in the Eredivisie soon.