Liverpool Faces £145m Standoff for Barcola After Salah Departure

Liverpool’s search for a new right-sided star has run straight into Parisian steel — and a £145 million wall.

With Mohamed Salah gone to Trabzonspor on a free, a nine-year era of guaranteed goals has ended overnight. The timing is brutal. The market is unforgiving. And, in Michael Owen’s view, Paris Saint-Germain know exactly how desperate Liverpool are.

A £145m stand-off

Liverpool’s recruitment team have zeroed in on 23-year-old French winger Barcola as their preferred solution out wide, ahead of other names floated in recent weeks such as Yan Diomande and Ibrahim Mbaye. Barcola is the one they want.

PSG, though, have planted their flag: £145 million or nothing.

Speaking to the ECHO, Owen didn’t bother hiding his disbelief at that figure. He called the proposed fee “extortionate” for a player who has yet to prove himself in the Premier League and argued that the French champions are simply leveraging Liverpool’s urgency.

He pointed to the obvious dynamic: a selling club with no need to sell, facing a buying club that has just lost one of the greatest forwards in its modern history. In that equation, the price only goes one way.

At some stage, Owen insisted, Liverpool have to draw a line.

Life after Salah

That line is hard to find when the void is this big.

Salah’s numbers at Liverpool are the sort usually reserved for club legends carved in bronze. Across nine seasons on Merseyside, the Egyptian scored 257 goals and supplied 123 assists in 442 appearances. Those contributions underpinned two Premier League titles and a Champions League triumph, anchoring an era in which Liverpool’s wide options terrified defences across Europe.

There was a time when the flanks picked themselves: Salah on one side, Sadio Mane on the other, Luis Diaz adding yet more firepower. Owen reflected on that depth of quality and contrasted it with the present picture, where Liverpool suddenly look light in exactly the area that once defined them.

Now, there is not just a gap. There is a chasm.

Owen believes Liverpool do not merely need a single winger. In his view, they “probably need two” to restore the kind of threat that became their trademark under previous managers. One signing feels essential. A second might be the difference between patching a hole and rebuilding a frontline.

Missed Bowen move, rising Barcola price

Owen also revisited an idea he had floated months earlier. If he had been in charge at Anfield, he said, he would have gone hard for Jared Bowen as Salah’s heir. A proven Premier League performer, a direct, goalscoring wide forward, Bowen seemed to him the logical target.

That door, he now accepts, is effectively shut. West Ham are under no pressure to sell, and the moment to strike has likely passed.

So Liverpool have turned to Barcola. Young. Talented. Available, at least in theory. The Frenchman ticks many of the boxes that top clubs crave: technical quality, pace, room to grow. Owen acknowledged as much, noting that Barcola “has got the quality” and appears to be genuinely on Liverpool’s radar.

But the number attached to his name changes the entire conversation.

PSG’s stance forces Liverpool into an uncomfortable choice: pay a fee that Owen describes as “eye-watering,” or walk away and risk entering the new season short in a key position. Everyone in Europe knows they are hunting for a top-class winger. Everyone knows they have to act. That transparency, Owen warned, comes at a cost.

The market has them exactly where sellers want them — and PSG are acting like it.

Pay up or pass?

For now, the standoff remains just that: Liverpool’s clear interest on one side, PSG’s towering valuation on the other. Owen senses that “there’s no smoke without fire” around the link, but stresses that any move will hinge on whether Liverpool are willing to go to a level he finds hard to justify.

The club that once rebuilt its attack with clinical precision now faces a different kind of test. Not on the pitch, but across the negotiating table.

How far do you go, and how much do you pay, to replace a player like Salah when everyone in the room knows you have no choice?