Liverpool’s midfield needs a revamp, and they may be looking towards two Portuguese stars in order to shuffle the deck in the middle of the park.
Indeed, according to Dean Jones, the Reds are interested in Fulham’s Joao Palhinha, while The Telegraph have reported that the Merseyside club have a strong interest in Matheus Nunes.
The interesting thing about these two rumours is that these two were formerly teammates at Sporting.
Nunes and Palhinha played together in Portugal for a number of years, and to say that they complimented each other in the middle of the park would be an understatement for the ages.
Palhinha and Nunes are a midfield match made in heaven. Palhinha is the destroyer. He makes more tackles than almost any other player in Europe – he’s physically dominant, he’s full of energy and he is arguably the most aggressive midfielder the Premier League has ever seen, and he’s only been here for a few months.
Nunes on the other hand is the more creative midfielder in this duo. A player who loves to progress the ball be it through creative passing or canny dribbling, Nunes is much more forward-thinking than Palhinha while remaining a hard worker.
On their own, these two are both fantastic footballers, but when you combine their skillsets into a midfield duo, you have two players who combine to make absolute magic in the middle of the park.
This pairing was pivotal to Sporting’s 2020/21 Primeira title win, and if it weren’t for a slip-up at the last hurdle with a 4-3 loss to Benfica, Sporting would have gone an entire season unbeaten with these two as the heartbeat of the team.
Midfields are all about how the players interact with one another, so reuniting a pairing that has already proven it can win a league title would be a stroke of genius from the Reds.
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