Liverpool Already Have A Candidate To Substitute Lovren

JAKARTA - Defender Dejan Lovren officially left Liverpool for Russian club Zenit Saint Petersburg a week ago. Now, the Reds already have a suitable replacement for Lovren.

Launching Antara, Tuesday, August 4, Jurgen Klopp is considering signing up Real Betis defender, Aissa Mandi. He is considered a sensible transfer option rather than a shopping rod like Chelsea or Manchester City.

In comparison, so far Chelsea have spent nearly 100 million euros to sharpen their front lines. The Blues brought in Hakim Ziyech from Ajax and Timo Werner from RB Leipzig.

Meanwhile City in the last few days have made a bid worth £ 41 million to sign center-back Nathan Ake from relegated team, Bournemouth.

Despite winning the Champions League last season and the English Premier League this season, Liverpool don't have the luxury of spending the same way as Chelsea or City.

So, Mandi is a quite reasonable option considering that Liverpool are estimated to only need to spend around 9 million euros to get the French-born Algerian defender.

This amount can be covered from the proceeds from Lovren's sale to Zenit, which is reportedly worth 12 million euros, according to the records of the transfer registrar's page, transfermarkt.com.

Moreover, Mandi only has a year remaining contract duration with Betis, which makes Liverpool have more bargaining power if they decide to approach the 28-year-old defender.

Mandi is considered to be a more experienced coating to fill the Liverpool center-back lineup currently occupied by Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip, compared to younger names in second tier teams such as Sepp van den Berg and Ki-Jana Hoever.

The Algerian national team defender is known to have good confidence in handling the ball at the back and is quite capable of delivering passes.

This season, Mandi made 29 appearances for Betis who finished 15th in the Spanish League final standings.