‘Reminds me a bit of…’ – Sky Sports pundit drops exciting Mac Allister boast amid Liverpool links
Paul Merson has made an exciting statement about Alexis Mac Allister amid the Brighton midfielder’s impending transfer to Liverpool.The 24-year-old has reached an agreement to join the Reds and is due to go for a medical over the next couple of days (Fabrizio Romano), with the Merseysiders seemingly closing in on their first signing of […]
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Paul Merson has made an exciting statement about Alexis Mac Allister amid the Brighton midfielder’s impending transfer to Liverpool.
The 24-year-old has reached an agreement to join the Reds and is due to go for a medical over the next couple of days (Fabrizio Romano), with the Merseysiders seemingly closing in on their first signing of the summer.
Speaking on Sky Sports, the former Arsenal and England player was raving over the proposed deal and compared the Argentine to a prominent member of Manchester City’s title-winning line-up.
Merson gushed: “If Liverpool are going to challenge for the league as well as just the top four, for them to get Mac Allister would be a great signing. He’s a top player, a World Cup winner and was a massive influence in that tournament.
“He’s a very good player, a very calming influence on the pitch. He keeps the ball and ticks it along, and reminds me a bit of an Ilkay Gundogan without the goals.
“He’s a different kind of player to Jude Bellingham who they wanted before, Bellingham would get forward a bit more, but Mac Allister does the simple stuff very, very well. People might say, ‘Oh, the simple stuff?’ but there’s not a lot of players who can do that.”
If Mac Allister can have anywhere near the same impact at Liverpool as Gundogan has had for Man City, Jurgen Klopp will be getting a genuine game-changer.
The Germany international scored twice in his team’s FA Cup final triumph on Saturday to keep them on course for a historic treble, with the in-form midfielder also netting braces against Leeds and Everton in the final three weeks of their Premier League campaign (Transfermarkt).
Merson’s reference is quite a fair one, with the 32-year-old the second-most comparable player to the Argentine according to FBref.
The two midfielders boasted similar returns this season for rate of shots on target (35% v 37.7%, Mac Allister first), pass completion (86% to 87.1%), interceptions made (22 v 20) and aerial duel success rate (61% v 61.3), while they had the same figure of expected assists (4.4 each), as per FBref.
Where the Sky Sports pundit is perhaps mistaken is that the Brighton midfielder actually scored one goal more than Gundogan (12 v 11) across all competitions in 2022/23, so if anything the former could be even more of an attacking threat for us than the German is for Man City.
Either way, the thought of the 24-year-old doing for us what his elder positional peer has done at the Etihad Stadium must be enough for Liverpool fans to almost drool with anticipation, should the transfer go through as expected.
EOTK Insider: The two-time gold medalist who is the only man to sign for Liverpool and Everton on two separate occasionsThe post ‘Reminds me a bit of…’ – Sky Sports pundit drops exciting Mac Allister boast amid Liverpool links appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.