With Liverpool’s new look attack having failed to click into top gear two months into the 2025-26 season, one of the key missing ingredients appears to be a forward willing and able to put vertical pressure on defenders both with and without the ball.
It’s the role that was filled at an elite level last season by Luis Diaz, who recorded 17 goals and eight assists in 50 total appearances with a goal involvement every 133 minutes. Then the club decided it was wiser to sell the 28-year-old rather than give him a new deal.
Diaz was also Liverpool’s forward most willing and able to press aggressively, and that’s something the Reds appear to be missing at least as much as his attacking play. Over the past month, Antoine Semenyo has begun to be talked up as a belated replacement.
Liverpool more than any other club have been linked to the 25-year-old who turns 26 in January and so is just two years the junior of Diaz. But perhaps two years makes all the difference. Regardless, the Reds have regularly been said to hold interest.
Now, the latest has Bournemouth looking to get Semenyo on a new contract—despite that his current deal runs through 2030. The interesting part of the news, from a Liverpool point of view, is that if a new deal does get signed it is likely to have a release clause.
If anything, that seems a move aimed at setting terms of a potential departure and taking away the need for guessing games and drama of the sort that embroiled a number of major Premier League transfers last summer—including Liverpool’s of Alexander Isak.
A new deal is typically a signal a player transfer will be harder to negotiate, but with Semenyo under contract for five-and-a-half more seasons, Bournemouth really have no need to strengthen their position so it will be interesting to see what comes of all this.