Liverpool bosses will have been keeping a close eye on Man City for a plethora of reasons in recent weeks.
Ahead of the Reds’ trip to the Etihad last Saturday, Jurgen Klopp and his staff will have inevitably studied Pep Guardiola’s side and their matches extensively when it came to plotting a game plan for their latest trip to Manchester. Beyond that, they will always have one eye on their bitter title-rivals’ fortunes, with just one point separating them at the top of the Premier League table once more.
With Saturday’s 1-1 draw now out of the way, publicly the Liverpool dressing need not focus on City for the foreseeable future. Not until the return fixture back at Anfield on March 9, barring their paths crossing in the FA Cup.
After all, ‘we only focus on ourselves and our next game,’ has been the constant message from the Reds camp during the Jurgen Klopp era. Even if the German’s playing squad’s own recollections of their Champions League and Premier League-winning campaigns for example paint a slightly different picture.
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Regardless, Saturday’s stalemate at the Etihad has been this week’s chip paper as Anfield attention turns to a Europa League visit of LASK Linz before next weekend’s home clash with Fulham.
But while Klopp and his players have been looking forward, some of his staff might well still have their attention firmly on the Etihad.
Liverpool loanee Fabio Carvalho followed in his parent club’s footsteps by travelling to Man City on Tuesday night. And with Reds staff continuing to monitor his progress for RB Leipzig, he was denied what could have been a famous winner.
Brought on as a 74th minute substitute alongside Yussef Poulsen with the score tied at 2-2, he was agonisingly denied a dream introduction after slotting home when running onto the Denmark international’s through-ball less than two minutes later. Alas, despite his well-taken finish, Carvalho was marginally offside when initially bringing down Lukas Klostermann’s long ball forward via his backside, before receiving it back inside the box and finding the bottom corner.
Coincidentally, had such a goal not been chalked off, the Liverpool loanee would have maintained an 100% scoring record at the Etihad, having scored on his previous appearances at the ground for both Fulham and the Reds. While such a strike would have fired RB Leipzig into an unlikely 3-2 lead, instead they lost by the same scoreline after Julian Alvarez struck a late winner.
And such disappointment was only the latest frustration for Carvalho.
RB Leipzig had wanted to sign him permanently last summer, seeing a bid believed to be in the region of around £10m rejected just a year after the Portuguese had moved to Anfield in a deal worth up to £7.7m with add-ons. Consequently, they instead settled on a season-long loan move instead, with it agreed the player was in need of more senior action.
After all, he made 16 appearances before the mid-season World Cup in Qatar last season, starting just six times and only totalling 520 minutes of senior action. Yet he’d play just five times following the return of club football, and featured for only 75 minutes in 2023 (66 of them came in a mid-January FA Cup third round replay win over Wolves).
At the time of his loan exit, The ECHO understood that Liverpool were unwilling to entertain the idea of letting Carvalho leave on a permanent basis just 12 months into his career on Merseyside. Meanwhile, club sources were adamant that the forward’s best years remain at Anfield, with there a confidence that Leipzig would offer the best environment for him to start to fulfil the potential that made him one of the most coveted young players in Europe at the turn of 2022.
But having joined RB Leipzig at the end of June, the move is yet to work out for either player or both clubs. Now five months into his time in Germany, he is featuring even less in the Bundesliga than he managed at Anfield during the first half of last season.
The 21-year-old has featured for just 257 minutes across 12 appearances for his temporary club, starting just once in the Bundesliga and making two late substitute appearances in the Champions League. Meanwhile, a second round DFB-Pokal exit to VfL Wolfsburg last month has limited his opportunities further.
While it previously would not have been a surprise to see Leipzig try to persuade Liverpool into selling Carvalho permanently next year, should he have impressed in Germany, so far the evidence must leave their fans wondering why they were so keen to sign the forward in the first place.
In truth, he has not been helped by intense competition for places and the fact that the Bundesliga outfit, much like the Reds, don’t play with a number 10 – which remains his favoured position. Instead, his snippets of action have come on the flanks, with him failing to provide any goal contributions as a result.
Had his goal against City been permitted to count, firing RB Leipzig ahead late on at the Etihad could have been the moment to ignite his career with the Bundesliga outfit. Instead, it was just another source of frustration of a move that has so far failed to spark into life.
An opening will potentially present itself to Carvalho in the New Year at least, with it reported that Forsberg is set to complete a January transfer to Leipzig sister-club New York Red Bulls.
The Sweden international has made 17 appearances so far this season, starting 10 times. And while only four of those starts have come in the Bundesliga, he has started all five Champions League group games and is currently a player ahead of Carvalho in the pecking order. Predominantly playing on the left, remove him and there is one less player the Liverpool loanee is vying with for starts and substitute action.
Whether he is able to take advantage of such opportunities in the near-future remains to be seen. Either way, Carvalho was denied the opportunity to impress those of a Liverpool persuasion at the home of his parent club’s bitter title-rivals.
But while he was unable to make headlines at the Etihad, it was a different story for one of his team-mates. Belgium international Lois Openda would net a brace for RB Leipzig to fire them into a 2-0 lead at half-time, only for Erling Haaland and Phil Foden to cancel out such an advantage after the break prior to Alvarez’s winner.
Regardless of the result, the Belgian has scored three times against Guardiola’s men this season, boasts four Champions League goals from five games so far this campaign, and has returned an eye-catching 13 goals from 17 appearances in the Bundesliga and Europe since joining Leipzig in the summer.
Were it not for Harry Kane’s 22 goals from 17 appearances for Bayern Munich and Serhou Guirassy’s return of 16 goals from 11 outings, Openda’s record would be earning much greater attention. He is just maintaining his eye-catching form across the continent from recent years, after all.
The 23-year-old netted 21 goals from 41 appearances for Lens last season, as they qualified for the Champions League but missed out on the Ligue 1 title to Paris Saint-Germain by a solitary point, with such form earning him a €43m move to Germany after just one year in France. Meanwhile, he had netted 24 goals from 50 appearances for Vitesse Arnhem in the Netherlands the year before, and 37 goals from 88 outings during a two-year loan, to prompt a €10m move from Belgian side Club Brugge in the summer of 2022 in the first place.
One of Europe’s most prolific strikers across three of the continent’s more high-profile leagues over the past two and a half seasons, returning 58 goals from 111 appearances, such form has not gone unnoticed. Handed a Belgium debut in June 2022, he marked the occasion with a goal against Poland before being included in their squad for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Now proving himself in the Champions League, and against the Premier League’s finest in Man City, he is reportedly earning admiring glances for the English top-flight. Given his recent rise, a further switch to one of Europe’s elite clubs seems inevitably sooner rather than later.
Journalist Sacha Tavolieri claimed on social media on Tuesday night that the Premier League market is ‘very hot’ on Openda, as he name-dropped Liverpool as one side supposedly interested in the striker. If he is on the Reds’ radar, impressing against Man City will have done him no harm as Anfield scouts potentially watch on.
With Carvalho providing reason to monitor RB Leipzig anyway, Liverpool will find it easy to monitor the striker’s progress this season. Meanwhile, the Red Bull market has served them well in recent years, with Dominik Szoboszlai becoming the latest player to make such a move to Anfield this season.
Before him, the Reds snapped up Ibrahima Konate and Naby Keita from RB Leipzig and Takumi Minamino from Red Bull Salzburg, with Sadio Mane also a Red Bull alumni.
Admittedly, Liverpool are in no rush to bolster their attacking ranks as things stand, having revamped their front line with the arrivals of Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, and Cody Gakpo over the past two years. But with Mohamed Salah’s long-term future unclear, such a stance won’t remain that way for long, though it is worth noting that Openda, as a right-footed centre-forward, could not be a like-for-like replacement if the Egyptian did depart.
Regardless, as the Reds continue to track Carvalho’s progress out on loan, Openda’s latest showing away at Man City will be only the latest outing to have caught the eye amid ongoing transfer scouting missions across the continent.
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Olivia Martin is a dedicated sports journalist based in the UK. With a passion for various athletic disciplines, she covers everything from major league championships to local sports events, delivering up-to-the-minute updates and in-depth analysis.
