Why Christian Eriksen to Liverpool Is a Rumour Reds Want to Be True

With the silly season now just weeks away from kicking into life once again upon the opening of the summer transfer window, Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers and his scouting team will be busy finalising their recruitment plans for next season.

The Northern Irishman has already laid out exactly how many new signings he wishes to bring to Anfield in the close season, stating as far back as March in the Daily Telegraph that he wanted to add “another three or four quality players” to the Reds’ first-team squad, before crucially going on to add that “it is quality we are after, not quantity.”

As after the second half to the campaign that the Merseyside giants have just enjoyed, in which the team showed genuine top-four form, optimism is high at Anfield that Liverpool can finally again challenge for a place in the UEFA Champions League next season after four long years without involvement in Europe’s premier club competition.

However, in order to ensure that the five-time European Cup winners are back dining at the top table of Continental football once more, Rodgers knows that he still needs to sprinkle just a little bit more attacking stardust over the team in order to push them over the finishing line come next May.

"I think we can have an exciting season next year," said Rodgers in the Telegraph following Liverpool’s 3-1 win at Fulham on the penultimate weekend of the campaign.

 "We can build towards that. We need more depth, we need some more (players) in the summer.

"If we can do that we will be looking to make a real sustainable challenge next year for the top four."

And, top of Rodgers’ list of potential new arrivals to Anfield when the summer transfer window swings opens for business once more on July 1 must be the name of Ajax’s young midfield player Christian Eriksen.

The Dane is already, at just the tender age of 21, one of Planet Football’s most exciting and skillful attacking operators, and a player of genuine Champions League quality who not just Rodgers and Co are interested in snaring.

But if the Reds were to beat the likes of fellow Premier League duo Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, according to the Metro and Daily Express, as well as beaten UEFA Champions League finalists Borussia Dortmund, say the Guardian, to the Denmark international’s signature this summer, then that would send out quite a message to both the club’s fans, as well as to the rest of the top flight and beyond.

A message Liverpool are still a force to be reckoned with and who the world’s best youngsters aspire to play for, and that next season the Reds mean business too.

Certainly Eriksen’s compatriot and a former Liverpool midfield player himself, Jan Molby, believes the Dane is exactly the type of player his old club should be trying to buy this summer.

“He’s a classy player,” Molby told the Liverpool Echo.

“An old-fashioned No. 10 in many ways. He has two great feet, he sees passes and has added goals to his game in recent weeks. He has all of the tools in his locker to be a real top class player.

“I’d love to see him at Liverpool, and he is exactly the type of player Liverpool should be looking at, but there will be some serious competition I am sure.”

Meanwhile, Eriksen’s Denmark international teammate and current Liverpool centre-back Daniel Agger is also in no doubt that the diminutive playmaker would be a huge success at Anfield, telling the Daily Mail: “We want to play attacking football with the ball on the ground and that is exactly what Christian Eriksen is all about.

“That is the kind of player we need.”

In fact, the more you examine the background to this possible transfer, the more it just makes complete sense, from a Liverpool point of view that is.

Firstly, there is the player’s contract situation at Ajax that will immediately make him an attractive acquisition to the club’s financially-conscious American owners, the Fenway Sports Group, with the Dane’s current deal at the Amsterdam ArenA due to expire in 2014.

That means that FSG and Rodgers would be able to land one of the world’s most promising starlets, aged just 21, for only £15 million say the Daily Mirror, and quite frankly opportunities like these do not come around that often.

And, if anyone had watched the twinkle-toed schemer in action during the group phase of last season’s UEFA Champions League, then it makes Eriksen’s reported price tag look even more eye catching with every passing minute.

In particular, the attacking midfield player turned in a world-class showing against Manchester City in Amsterdam last October that confirmed the then Premier League champions’ exit from the competition, as well as the player’s undoubted array of talents.

Meanwhile, eight months previous to that contest Eriksen had also lit up screens with a man-of-the-match display for his country against England in Copenhagen, and this despite the hosts losing the friendly 2-1, with even the visitors’ Frank Lampard taking note of his prodigious skills.

“I didn’t know much about Eriksen before the game, but Fabio Capello was very aware of him. He is going to be a top player,” confirmed the veteran Chelsea midfield player after the international in February 2012.

And Lampard is right as the Dane, capped 34 times already by his country since making his international bow three years ago, is a genuine creative influence with real attacking intent, as his already impressive record with Ajax ably demonstrates.

Since making his competitive debut for the Dutch giants on January 17, 2010 against NAC Breda, Eriksen has contributed 23 goals and 44 assists in just 109 Eredivisie fixtures, while in all competitions for Ajax the player has registered an equally impressive 30 goals and 57 assists in only 156 matches.

So a goalscorer and a creator of goals too, the ideal package really, and with the player himself being adaptable enough to be able to operate in a number of different attacking positions across the forward line, having been schooled from a young age in the Ajax youth teams, then Eriksen would also have no problems whatsoever fitting into the many different lineups that Rodgers often likes to deploy at Liverpool.

That could be in the hole behind one or two strikers, in either of the wide attacking positions either side of a front man in a 4-3-3, or even in the conventional 4-4-2 that Rodgers does sometimes utilise, Eriksen would be equally happy operating either as one of the wingers or even as a central midfield player.

And in case there were still any doubters out there among you, then perhaps the views of Ajax technical director Marc Overmars will help change your mind, a man who has worked closely with Eriksen for the past two years in Amsterdam.

“The day he leaves, he will be ready to play for the very best. He is a player that even the biggest clubs in the world could do with having in their squad,” observed the legendary former Netherlands international wide man of his young prodigy.

Exactly 30 years ago this summer, Liverpool missed out on signing one of Denmark’s greatest ever players when Michael Laudrup opted to join Lazio instead of moving to Anfield, and now Reds fans must be praying that history does not repeat itself once again.