A few years later than most of us would have liked, but after years of flirting with commitment Xherdan Shaqiri and Liverpool football club have finally tied the knot *pops champagne bottle*.
Shaqiri is a ‘confidence player’, one of those enigmatic, mercurial type of talents, who can give you embody fantasy and evoke frustration in the same game, you never really know what you’re going to get, but you always know what he’s capable of… GAME CHANGING MOMENTS!
While Shaqiri would have benefitted from playing under Jurgen Klopp earlier in his career, there is still room for improvement in his game for the Liverpool boss to tap into.
Throughout Shaqiri’s career the criticism levelled at him is that ‘he isn’t a team player’, he needs to be the big fish in a small pond (e.g. Stoke and Basel FC) throw him into the ocean (Bayern Munich and Inter Milan) and it isn’t long before he starts to seem out of his depth.
It’s unlikely that Shaqiri will start many games because in Salah, Firmino and Mané, Liverpool boast what is arguably the best front three in Europe, but I’m sure that he was fully aware of this before signing and therefore we can assume that he’s alright with it… or he thinks that he’s good enough to change Klopp’s mind, either way it’s a win-win.
Whether he starts many games or not, Shaqiri provides some much needed depth to Liverpool’s squad – when Mohamed Salah went off injured In last season’s Champions Final, the only attacking option we had on the bench was Adam Lallana, a player who had spent most of the season out injured. Shaqiri would have/would be perfect for situations like this!
The VERDICT: At £13.5 million Shaqiri is a minimal risk signing, not likely to be relied on to carry the team but eager to prove himself when called on. Great piece of business.
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