West Ham United co-owner David Gold has offered his sympathy but little hope to Liverpool over the Philippe Coutinho transfer saga.
Coutinho has been linked with a big money move to Barcelona after the Catalan giants sold Neymar for a world record £200 million to Paris St Germain.
The Brazilian handed in a transfer request last week after Barca saw two bids rejected by the Reds.
Many supporters have little sympathy with Liverpool, who are doing the exact same thing in their pursuit of Virgil van Dijk.
However, Hammers chief Gold says he feels for Liverpool after experiencing a similar thing with Dimitri Payet – who forced a return to Marseille back in January – but told BBC Five Live Sport there is only one solution.
“I sympathise with them, the club always comes first 100%,” Gold said on Five Live.
“I do feel for them because you know we had that dreadful experience with Payet.
“We were desperate to keep him, desperate, desperate… you know (he was) one of the best players that we’ve ever had at West Ham and sadly you come to realise that there’s only one way, and that’s a divorce and you’ve got to do it and we did but… we tried very hard to keep him.”
Slaven Bilic is arguably still feeling the impact of losing the mercurial Payet who for a club of West Ham’s size and status always looked difficult to replace in the current market.
Liverpool are digging their heels in over Coutinho, and he is equally important to the Anfield side as Payet was to West Ham.
But Gold is right, it seems in these situations there is only ever one answer, to do the deal and move on.
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