Ben Doak is widely seen one of Liverpool’s top young talents, and a season on loan at Middlesborough in 2024-25 that saw the 19-year-old winger make 36 appearances for the Championship side didn’t do anything to put a damper on such thinking.
It’s a big step up from mid-table in the Championship to regular minutes for the defending Premier League champions, though, and it’s never certain a young player will develop as everyone hopes. There’s also been a quiet but consistent buzz this summer concerning a potential permanent sale for the young Scot.
The latest on that front comes from Ed Aarons, a reporter with Crystal Palace connections, in The Guardian, who links Doak with a move to The Eagles—potentially as part of a larger series of moves that would see Liverpool get centre half target Marc Guéhi.
Liverpool have made no secret of their interest in the homegrown Guéhi, who they see as an ideal replacement for Jarell Quansah as the young Scouser moves to Bayer Leverkusen and the Reds are left with a rather large hole at third choice on their centre half depth chart heading into the 2025-26 season.
Palace, though, have set a £40M+ asking price for Guéhi the Reds are unwilling to meet given the player has only a year left on his contract. Doak, then, might help the sides to meet at an acceptable place on fee—at least if Palace hold genuine interest.
It wouldn’t, one would expect, be a swap deal. Any such moves, though, would clearly be linked—as in the case of Quansah heading to Leverkusen while Liverpool signed Florian Wirtz from the Bundesliga club. If they were, one might even expect it to result in a pair of eyebrow-raising low fees.
That’s because Chelsea retain a 20% sell-on clause with Guéhi such that if the Reds did pay £40M for him Palace only end up with £32M. Linking the two deals with both clubs selling for under their valuation would mean less for Chelsea—and more for Palace.
Meanwhile, Palace could very well be in need of a player like Doak—who they were already linked to in January—sooner rather than later, with Tottenham pushing to sign Eberechi Eze and Arsenal rumoured to have also entered the picture as potential suitors for the 27-year-old England international winger.