Iraola eager for 'certainties' as Liverpool close in on £123m Barcola signing

Andoni Iraola has admitted he cannot wait for the summer transfer window to close, with Liverpool set to finalise a £123million deal for Paris Saint-Germain winger Bradley Barcola ahead of Tuesday’s deadline.

The French club have agreed to sell Barcola for an initial fee of £106m, with a further £17m available in add-ons. The 21-year-old will undergo a medical this weekend and is expected to become Liverpool’s most expensive signing to date, joining Jeremy Jacquet, Victor Munoz and Ronald Araujo as summer arrivals at Anfield.

“We’ve been patient all summer and now we just have to wait,” Iraola said after Liverpool were held to a 2-2 draw by Nottingham Forest at Anfield on Saturday. “We just have to wait a couple more days and see how we finish and how the squad looks in the second half of September.”

The result left Liverpool with back-to-back draws to open the Premier League season, having also been held 2-2 in their previous fixture. Victor Munoz’s late strike salvaged a point against Forest after Morgan Gibbs-White’s penalty, Dan Ndoye’s low finish and Alexander Isak’s tap-in had threatened to leave the Reds empty-handed.

Iraola was candid about the difficulty of preparing a team while the window remains open. “Honestly, I am looking forward to having who we have and a definitive squad so we can start working with certainties,” he said.

Asked at his post-match press conference whether further signings were possible before the deadline, the Liverpool manager declined to offer specifics. “I cannot tell you anything different right now. It’s true that there are things going on, like is normal because we are talking about the last weeks of the market, but now we have to wait.”

He reiterated that any meaningful squad assessment would have to wait until after the window shuts. “We are talking now about the hypothesis because we don’t know what’s going to be the squad on September 2. I think every analysis that I can make is when I know and when everything finishes, when I know who’s going to be here all the season or at least until January.”

Barcola arrives having been a key figure in PSG’s recent dominance of Ligue 1, and his addition is expected to significantly strengthen Liverpool’s attacking depth as Iraola looks to find consistency after a stuttering start to the campaign.