da spicy bet： Back in early April the Daily Star claimed Manchester United had won the race for highly-rated Brazilian wonderkid Roberto Firmino.
da roleta： But today Liverpool officially announced that they’d signed the 23-year-old, subject to a medical. The Daily Star are now reporting Liverpool paid Bundesliga side Hoffenheim an eye-watering £29million to bring him to Anfield.
Firmino’s arrival is the fifth signing Liverpool have made already this summer, with James Milner, Danny Ings, Adam Bogdan and Joe Gomez also joining the Anfield ranks ahead of next season.
The real question on everyone’s lips at the moment is whether Firmino is the man to add the extra bit of bite in the Reds’ attack, which has been missing since Luis Suarez’s departure to Barcelona last summer.
Will Manchester United regret not signing him when they had the chance? Will Liverpool benefit greatly from the Brazilian?
We booted up our copy of Football Manager to find out, and the results will have United fans with heads in hands, and Liverpool fans jumping with joy. Here’s how it went down…
Brendan Rodgers didn’t do much more business after signing Firmino. He did bring in defender Dede from Cruzeiro for £8.5m and midfielder Josh Brownhill from Preston for £775k, who he loaned straight out to Newcastle for the season.
Liverpool got off to a pretty weird start to the Premier League season, winning two of their opening six games – against Manchester City and Arsenal. But they also drew two and lost two in that period, losing to West Ham and Leicester and drawing with Bournemouth and Leicester.
Firmino scored three goals during that opening sequence of fixtures and immediately showed signs of becoming a very important player for Rodgers’ side.
The Reds followed up a dodgy start to the campaign with a run of nine games unbeaten (W7, D2) before not winning a game in their final four games of the calendar year (D2, L2).
After the New Year it was business as usual for Rodgers’ men and they remained unbeaten until late March when Man United arrived at Anfield to end Liverpool’s 11 match run without loss with a 2-1 victory.
Firmino, though, was making all the difference for Rodgers’ side, netting seven Premier League goals during that brilliant run of results. It was a run that had Liverpool well and truly in the race for the title, but the loss to Man United handed the initiative to their arch rivals Man City.
Up to this point Man United had been struggling after winning just two of their previous eight league fixtures. It was a period in the season that resulted in them losing their top four status for the second time in three seasons.
Liverpool, on the other hand, reacted well to that loss to United and went on another run of six matches unbeaten. That included 4-0 win over rivals Everton at Goodison Park on the same day league leaders Man City slipped up against Norwich.
The title race went to the wire with City boasting a three point lead over Liverpool on the final day, though Liverpool had a slightly better goal difference. But while Man City comfortably brushed aside West Ham with a 3-0 win, Liverpool lost 3-2 at home to Norwich.
City won the league by six points in the end, but Liverpool fans were generally delighted with how the season went. Man United finished fifth and a huge 12 points behind fourth placed Chelsea. Louis Van Gaal was promptly sacked.
Firmino ultimately has the last laugh as he ends the campaign as Liverpool’s top scorer with 19 goals in all competitions…
And his overall stats were pretty good, netting a goal every 216 minutes and hitting the target 39% of the time with his efforts on goal.
So on the basis of this experiment Man United will have regretted not signing Firmino. They instead kept hold of Robin van Persie, who ended the season as the club’s top scorer with 15 goals.
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