Luis Diaz repeating Xabi Alonso Liverpool transfer trick as Anthony Gordon second thoughts clear

Luis Diaz had been enjoying a blistering start to the season even before scoring his first Liverpool hat-trick in the 4-0 thrashing of Bayer Leverkusen. The Colombian now has nine goals and two assists from just 15 appearances this season and is level with Mohamed Salah at the top of the Reds’ scoring charts.

Diaz is also only four goals short of matching his season's best since joining Liverpool from Porto in January 2022 and needs only two more assists to match his creative best. It would be something of a surprise if both records aren’t emphatically broken during the current campaign.

Yet it is perfectly plausible that Diaz could have departed Anfield last summer, following months of transfer speculation and overseas reports he had grown unsettled.

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With it well-documented that the Reds had agreed a £75m deal to sign Anthony Gordon back in June, which would have seen Joe Gomez move the opposite way, only for it collapse after Newcastle United raised funds to comply with PSR elsewhere, we will never know what such a transfer would have meant for Diaz’s future had it actually been completed.

While Liverpool would go on to sign Federico Chiesa for an initial £10m fee from Juventus, the Italian is well-suited to playing on the right-hand side. In contrast, Gordon’s indifferent start to the current campaign at St. James’ Park is partly pointed to a number of his appearances coming on his unfavoured right flank.

There would have been a number of supporters who may have been happy to replace Diaz with Gordon last summer, had the former wanted to depart. The England international is four years his junior and outscored him in the Premier League last season, after all.

But now such a thought is inconceivable with Diaz enjoying the form of his Reds career to date.

Having caught the eye in his first half-year at Anfield in 2022, there have been mitigating circumstances as to why the forward has perhaps not taken off as hoped in his two full seasons.

His 2022/23 campaign was disrupted by a serious knee injury, while only Diaz himself will know how much of a toll the shock kidnapping of his parents in October 2023 took on him last season.

But now, with Arne Slot at the helm, he has been unleashed. And evidently, it does not matter which role he is operating in either, with his last three starts coming in each of Liverpool’s three attacking positions and his Leverkusen hat-trick coming in his first ever outings for the club as a centre-forward.

It is perhaps slightly ironic that Xabi Alonso was in the opposing dugout on Tuesday night, considering his own Reds career following a similar pattern.

The Spaniard shone in 2004/05 as Liverpool won the Champions League, and did not quite match the same levels in subsequent seasons. This in part was what led to Rafa Benitez infamously being willing to sell the midfielder in the summer of 2008 and replace him with Gareth Barry.

Both transfers failed to materialise. And perhaps then heading into the campaign with a point to prove, Alonso went on to enjoy the season of his Anfield career in 2008/09 as the Reds came agonisingly close to winning the Premier League. Such form would then help earn him a £30m move to Real Madrid.

Fifteen years later and Diaz now finds himself in a similar position, albeit without being as close to the exit door the previous summer. While the season might be only 16 games old, considering it a point proven.

The 27-year-old has made a mockery of his doubters and any suggestion that he should be traded in to make way for Gordon.

Whether the Barracas boy finds himself the subject of new transfer speculation next summer remains to be seen. But when Diaz is in this kind of form, those of a Red persuasion will be hoping they can continue to chant ‘and he plays for Liverpool’ for many years to come.