The Sky Sports News channel have claimed this evening that Javier Mascherano has signed for Liverpool on a four-year deal. The club have sinced denied this.
The report claimed that the Mascherano deal was worth £18.6m and had been completed this evening, but a statement on the LFC.tv official website said that this was not true.
The announced that youngster Lee Peltier’s time at Anfield is now over, after he signed a permanent deal with League One side Yeovil Town, after spending the first half of the season on loan there.
As for Mascherano, the club said: “Meanwhile, contrary to reports elsewhere, the deal to complete Javier Mascherano’s permanent move to Liverpool has yet to be finalised.”
Mascherano’s deal is expected to go through soon, but was believed to be a five-year deal, costing £17m, a fee which included the player’s wages for the full five years. Sky’s claim that the length of the deal is a year shorter, for a higher fee, would need to be checked – the owners will be doing all they can to make this deal sound like major “support” on their part. Remember, they exaggerated the Fernando Torres fee by at least £6.5m last summer.
As well as including his wages for the length of the deal, the fee will also be payable over the full length of that contract.
Momo was an important member of the Liverpool squad in the early days of his Anfield career, but two major injuries, including the one that left him wearing special glasses on the pitch, saw him struggling to recapture his old form. Eventually we saw Momo struggling more and more and so starting fewer and fewer games, a vicious circle that frustrated the player enough to demand a transfer. He’d only signed a new deal last June, running until 2011.