Liverpool are refusing to make an offer for Barcelona defender Ronald Araujo ahead of January after being offered the player, according to reports.<\/p>\n
After making a perfect start to the season with five wins from five Premier League matches, Liverpool<\/a> have dropped to eighth in the table<\/a> after a terrible run of form.<\/p>\n Their 2-0 win over West Ham at the London Stadium<\/a> over the weekend was only their fourth victory in the Reds\u2019 last 13 matches in all competitions.<\/p>\n Despite spending over \u00a3400m<\/a> in the summer transfer window on new players, Liverpool could turn to the transfer market once again in January as they look to solve some issues.<\/p>\n The centre of defence has been a particular issue, with Ibrahima Konate particularly out of form this season, and there are rumours that Liverpool could sign a new centre-back in the winter.<\/p>\n Barcelona\u2019s Araujo has been a long-term target<\/a> for the Reds but now reports in Spain have claimed that Liverpool are \u2018refusing to negotiate\u2019 a deal ahead of the January window.<\/p>\n READ:\u00a0Salah has fallen \u2013 which ten other apparent Premier League undroppables could be next?<\/a><\/p>\n Araujo has been in poor form recently for the Catalan giants and Barcelona are attempting to \u2018transfer him\u00a0before his market value declines further\u2019.<\/p>\n Despite Barcelona now willing to drop their asking price from \u20ac60m to \u20ac40m, a \u20ac20m (\u00a318m) discount, \u2018Liverpool didn\u2019t hesitate for a moment before rejecting the signing of Araujo, who is no longer of any interest to Arne Slot.\u2019<\/p>\n The report added: \u2018At Anfield they prefer to save that money and focus on bringing in another, more reliable centre-back.\u2019<\/p>\n It follows news that Araujo was given indefinite leave by Barcelona after the Uruguay international requested a period of absence.<\/p>\n Barcelona boss Hansi Flick said on Monday: \u201cIt is a private situation, I don\u2019t want to say more. And please, if you can respect it I\u2019d appreciate it.\u201d<\/p>\n Adding to Flick\u2019s comments, Barcelona president Joan Laporta said: \u201cHe has been heavily criticised, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s fair.<\/p>\n \u201cHe gives his all on the pitch, he\u2019s our captain, and now he needs to get through this difficult period because he\u2019s a very emotional person with strong feelings.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s had a tough time, and I want to tell him that we\u2019re behind him, that he needs to turn the page because here we all win and we all lose, and no one person is responsible for defeats or victories.\u201d<\/p>\n MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365\u2026 Liverpool boss Slot has been suffering his own abuse for the Reds\u2019 poor displays and the Dutchman insists it\u2019s \u201cdefinitely not a good thing\u201d.<\/p>\n Responding to social media abuse, Slot told a press conference on Tuesday: \u201cIt is normal we are criticised, even if we are winning I think this happens.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not a social media person and I am not aware of it but I\u2019m not stupid and I know it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n \u201cAbuse is definitely not a good thing. What I know and what I feel is the support the fans give me in the stadium. They sing for the team but also for me. That\u2019s the support I feel.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday\u2019s opponents, Sunderland, Slot added:\u00a0\u201cThey brought in a lot of new players and started off so well.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the Chelsea against Arsenal game, very high quality game, and I was aware of the fact that Sunderland beat Chelsea in their stadium and drew with Arsenal. It tells you how strong they must be.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have shown a great mentality. The style they play, the risks they take, all 11 players work so, so hard to get a result.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool are refusing to make an offer for Barcelona defender Ronald Araujo ahead of January after being offered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[639,218,348,708,50,221,119228,1671,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-295102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-barcelona","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-home-page","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-premier-league","14":"tag-ronald-araujo","15":"tag-soccer","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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