Curtis Jones Set for Inter Switch as Liverpool Faces Midfield Gamble
Curtis Jones was always going to divide opinion. What’s striking is that his likely exit still feels like a punch to the gut.
The last Scouser in the Liverpool first team, a lad who walked through the Academy doors at nine, is on the brink of walking out of Anfield for good at 25. Fabrizio Romano has already rolled out the trademark “here we go” on X, with Inter understood to have agreed an initial €30m fee plus a further €4–5m in add-ons (£30m plus around £3.4m–£4.3m).
The Italian end of the deal is being mapped out. The medical is “being planned”, according to Romano, while Gianluca Di Marzio has detailed the structure of the €35m (£34.3m) package. La Gazzetta dello Sport go with €30m plus €5m and insist an official announcement is expected “in the next few hours”.
On Merseyside, the messaging is more cautious. The ECHO and James Pearce at The Athletic both say a deal is close but not yet signed off. The direction of travel is clear enough: Jones is expected to leave.
And that’s where the real argument starts.
Life after Curtis Jones
Jones has never quite become the star many imagined when he first slipped into the fringes of Jürgen Klopp’s great side as a teenager. The maverick No.10/winger was gradually reshaped into a press-resistant No.8, sacrificed flair for structure, and still never fully hit the ceiling some thought he had.
Yet he became something else: indispensable glue.
He covered three midfield roles, fought for his place, and in Arne Slot’s final season ended up as a highly capable auxiliary right-back. That versatility has masked Liverpool’s lack of depth in several zones. Take him out and the squad suddenly looks thin in a lot of places at once.
Inside the club, though, there is little appetite to replace him directly. Journalist David Lynch, speaking via Anfield Index, has said his information points to “close to zero chance” of Liverpool signing a like-for-like midfield replacement. Instead, 19-year-old Trey Nyoni is expected to step up as fourth-choice central midfielder.
It’s a bold call. A risk, frankly.
Wataru Endo offers a more defensive option. James McConnell’s proposed loan to Preston North End is on hold, which may not be a coincidence as Liverpool weigh keeping the 21-year-old as another homegrown body. Stefan Bajcetic, training on an individual programme all summer and now attracting interest from Getafe, is unlikely to be a serious factor early on.
Behind them, there are defensive reshuffles that could ease the strain. New loanee Ronald Araujo played six times at right-back for Barcelona last season and is viewed as a strong one-v-one defender in wide areas. Jeremy Jacquet and Joe Gomez can both slide across to cover Jeremie Frimpong while Conor Bradley is out. Calvin Ramsay, a natural right-back, remains at the club despite talk of a loan.
Put bluntly, Liverpool are trying to solve a midfield problem with a mix of internal promotions and defensive flexibility. The homegrown quota looms large in that calculation. Losing Jones means losing a rare homegrown player in a squad already wrestling with the prospect of leaving non-homegrown players out of the Champions League group.
Names like Adam Wharton have been floated from the outside, not least after the Crystal Palace midfielder fuelled social media chatter by winning an eBay auction for a signed Steven Gerrard Istanbul 2005 shirt. But Liverpool appear to have decided the prices, or the profiles, don’t fit Andoni Iraola’s plans.
Sky Sports’ Vinny O’Connor has suggested “you would expect a replacement to be brought in” if Jones left. The reality right now is that the market offers few obvious, affordable answers. Liverpool could easily reach deadline day weaker in a key area than when the window opened, banking on Nyoni’s temperament and Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch maintaining last season’s levels.
It’s a big bet for a club with title ambitions.
Quansah saga: Liverpool escape the worst-case scenario… for now
If Liverpool want a recent example of how a squad can be left exposed after a title win, they don’t need to look far. The Marc Guehi mess still stings.
Liverpool thought they had their man from Crystal Palace last summer, only for Steve Parish to pull a late U-turn on deadline day while the defender was undergoing his medical. Six months later, Guehi joined Manchester City in January for a lower fee than Liverpool had agreed.
The club couldn’t control Parish’s reversal or Guehi’s wage demands. What they could control was what they did with Jarell Quansah. They chose to sell him to Bayer Leverkusen while the Guehi deal was still far from certain.
It now looks like one of the most baffling calls of the post-title era.
Quansah, one of the most promising young centre-backs in the Premier League, left for a fee that already looks like a steal. Liverpool then failed to bring in a replacement and spent most of last season juggling two senior centre-backs, both frequently out of form and often flirting with the treatment room.
The twist? Liverpool built a buy-back clause into Quansah’s move, valid this summer or next. It underlined how much they rated him and raised a blunt question: if you think you might want him back so soon, why sell in the first place?
Jeremy Jacquet’s arrival, Giovanni Leoni’s return to fitness and the later loan for Araujo all helped push Quansah’s form at Leverkusen into the background. His buy-back fee is believed to drop next year, which only made the decision to wait more intriguing.
Then came the scare. Last week, Sky Sports and The Athletic both reported that Arsenal were in talks for Quansah, barely a year after he left Anfield. The prospect of watching him line up for a direct rival, while Liverpool dithered, threatened to turn a questionable decision into a full-blown fiasco.
Now, though, Sky Sports report Arsenal are “in advanced talks” for Ezri Konsa instead. The Aston Villa defender, like Quansah, is right-sided and can also cover at right-back. Arsenal had been linked with Konsa for weeks; the sudden public interest in Quansah may well have been leverage to soften Villa’s £60m stance.
Whatever the motive, Liverpool look to have dodged the nightmare scenario of Quansah landing at the Emirates. For now, at least, the door remains open for the Warrington-born defender to return in a future window, with that buy-back clause still in place and his stock rising in Germany.
The question is whether Liverpool will step through it before someone else slams it shut.
Liverpool circle Boca gem Aranda and a growing South American pipeline
While the first team wrestles with depth and buy-back clauses, Liverpool’s recruitment department is quietly doubling down on a familiar strategy: go straight to the source for elite young talent.
The club already have a deal in place for Colombian attacking midfielder Samuel Martinez, who will arrive next year. Now another South American prospect has been linked. Argentine outlet El Crack Deportivo report that Liverpool are among a cluster of clubs “courting the services of” 19-year-old Tomas Aranda, the Boca Juniors attacking midfielder and left winger.
Aranda’s numbers this season are modest – one goal and three assists in 19 games – but the context matters. Boca president Juan Roman Riquelme, one of the greatest players ever to operate in that role, reportedly views him as a “great gem”. The teenager has a $20m (£14.7m) release clause, and Boca, according to the reports, are desperate to keep him.
Riquelme “doesn’t want to know” about losing Aranda. The market may not care.
El Intransigente back up the interest and suggest that a bid close to that release clause could force Boca into a “difficult decision”. Chelsea are given headline billing in both reports. Inter, Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen, the City Football Group, Parma, Como, Corinthians and Sao Paulo are also said to be watching closely, with Liverpool listed among those “following” Aranda “closely”.
It fits a pattern. In recent windows Liverpool have targeted players before they hit Europe’s traditional stepping-stone clubs: Martinez, Mor Talla Ndiaye, Ifeanyi Ndukwe, Rio Ngumoha, Nyoni. The club’s recruitment team clearly believe that cutting out the middleman is the best way to land the next wave of elite talent.
There’s more. Liverpool have also been linked with Tijuana’s 17-year-old playmaker Gilberto Mora, who impressed for Mexico at the World Cup this summer. The volume of names points to a clear strategy, even if only a fraction of these pursuits ever turn into concrete bids.
The senior squad might be taking risks. The pipeline behind it is being built with intent.
Ndukwe loan, Gakpo on Spurs radar and Darwin Nunez on the move
Away from Jones and Quansah, there is movement on the fringes of the Liverpool squad.
Multiple outlets report that Ifeanyi Ndukwe is close to joining Levante on a season-long loan. The Austria Vienna academy graduate, who caught the eye at centre-back in pre-season, would be heading into LaLiga, a Band 1 domestic league under post-Brexit regulations. That matters: he can accumulate the points needed for a UK work permit more quickly there. Paul Gorst has reported that the move is not yet done, but Levante are “understood to be at the front of the queue”.
In North London, Tottenham are gearing up for a late attacking spree. Sky Sports say Spurs want three forwards before the window shuts, with Cody Gakpo among their leading targets. The plan, as briefed, is ambitious: Gakpo for one flank, Savinho for the other, and a centre-forward such as Omar Marmoush through the middle.
Pedro Neto is viewed as an alternative if Spurs can’t prise Gakpo away from Anfield. The north London club are said to be “waiting for Liverpool to sign Bradley Barcola and – potentially – his Paris Saint-Germain team-mate Ibrahim Mbaye” before pushing for Gakpo on top of Savinho. It is a domino chain that depends on Liverpool first making their own moves in the market.
Elsewhere, Darwin Nunez is on the verge of another reset. The forward is set for a loan switch to Al Diriyah from Al Hilal, having been frozen out at last season’s Saudi Pro League runners-up. He had been expected to join Mohamed Salah at Trabzonspor, but that move collapsed. Now Al Diriyah have reportedly agreed to cover 75% of his wages, a commitment that has helped swing the deal, according to Sacha Tavolieri’s breakdown of the situation.
The Saudi Pro League will keep Nunez for at least one more year. Where he goes after that is far less clear.
Endrick noise exposes the rumour mill at its worst
On paper, Endrick to Liverpool makes a kind of sense. Liverpool need another option off the right and someone who can play through the middle. Endrick can do both, already has elite-level exposure and carries enormous upside.
The story behind the link, though, collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
It surfaces first on Madrid Universal, a Real Madrid fan site that aggregates stories about the club’s players and targets. They cite Mundo Deportivo, who claim Endrick is on the fringes at Madrid thanks to competition and the arrivals of Yan Diomande and Carlos Espi, and that Liverpool have registered interest in a €65m (£55.7m) permanent deal or a loan.
Mundo Deportivo in turn point to “the English press, specifically Livescore”. Livescore’s piece is a republished article from Anfield Watch. Anfield Watch’s story leans on Fichajes, a regular in the nonsense column.
Fichajes push the tale further, stating that “Jose Mourinho is counting on the player for the upcoming 2026-27 season, although his future will depend on the attacker's own decision.” The problem is that decision has already been reported: Endrick intends to stay at Real Madrid and “fight for his place”, a stance agreed by “the player, the club and head coach”, according to Mario Cortegana in The Athletic last week.
Fichajes even acknowledge this, noting that Endrick has “maintained over the last few weeks his intention of competing for minutes in Madrid” and that “just a few days ago, the situation pointed to him staying after Mourinho and sporting leadership opted to keep him in the squad.”
What they don’t do is explain what has changed. Because nothing has.
So the story stands on nothing more than speculation piled on top of old information, funneled through fan sites and recycled as fresh “interest”. It’s a neat snapshot of the modern rumour mill: a maze of half-truths and echoes, rarely required to make sense.
Liverpool have real decisions to make in the next fortnight – on Jones’ replacement, on whether to move for another defender, on how aggressively to chase the next South American star. Endrick, for now, is just background noise. The real question is whether Liverpool’s calculated risks leave them ready for a title fight, or a season spent wondering why they didn’t do just one more deal.
