Liverpool are reportedly closing in on a £120million deal for PSG winger Bradley Barcola - but his arrival could create a major headache for Andoni Iraola
Bradley Barcola
Bradley Barcola looks set to join Liverpool(Image: Getty Images)
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Let's be brutally honest for a second. Mohamed Salah spoiled Liverpool fans.
For the best part of a decade, the Egyptian King was a biological cheat code, skewing our perception of human endurance. You stuck his name on the right side of the team sheet and, barring injury, you could forget about it. He would be there. Again. And again. And again.
Aside from the odd Arne Slot-related selection hiccup, Salah simply played. Every single week. We're talking upwards of 3,000 Premier League minutes in a season like clockwork. He didn't so much survive the modern football calendar as casually ignore it. He was relentless. He was indestructible.
Now, Andoni Iraola has taken the reins, Salah has moved on, and Bradley Barcola - reportedly on the verge of joining Liverpool in a £120million deal - looks set to be the man tasked with bringing the electricity to the flanks. There's just one rather large problem. Iraola is going to have to manage Barcola's minutes. Heavily.
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This is not a criticism of the Frenchman. Quite the opposite. Barcola is an extraordinary footballer. He is rapid enough to make Premier League full backs question their career choices, technically gifted enough to turn a defender inside out and blessed with the sort of potential that could make £120m look, in a few years' time, like peanuts.
But Salah has left behind a ridiculously high benchmark for durability, and Barcola is nowhere near it.
Just look at the numbers. At PSG, Barcola has enjoyed something that simply will not exist in the same form at Anfield: rest.
According to FBref, the most minutes the 23-year-old has played in a single league season is 2,181 - just 35 more than Salah's lowest total across his entire nine-year spell at Liverpool.
Mohamed Salah claps the fans
Mohamed Salah almost never missed a game for Liverpool(Image: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA, Getty Images)
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Over the course of his senior career, Barcola has averaged 1,751 minutes per season in the league. That's roughly 19 full matches. Salah, meanwhile, averaged a staggering 2,912 - the equivalent of 32 full matches - and broke the 3,000-minute barrier four times.
There are reasons for that disparity. PSG's domestic superiority has allowed them to treat Ligue 1 rather like a weekly dress rehearsal for the Champions League. Luis Enrique has been able to rotate aggressively, preserve his best players and regard certain league fixtures as an opportunity to put feet up rather than put everything on the line.
Liverpool do not have that luxury.
The Premier League is an altogether less forgiving beast. There are no routine away games in quite the same sense. Every point matters, every fixture arrives carrying consequences and every Christmas period seems to have been personally designed by someone with a grudge against human hamstrings.
Then there's the small matter of the winter break. In France, players get the chance to disappear for a while, recharge the batteries and allow the accumulated bruises of the first half of the season to become slightly less angry.
Barcola
Barcola was frequently rested at PSG - but won't have the same luxury at Liverpool(Image: Mickael Chavet/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)
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In England? Welcome to December, Bradley. Here's four games in 10 days, freezing rain, a trip to Selhurst Park on Boxing Day and the general understanding that nobody is particularly interested in how your legs are feeling. Bon Appétit.
The physical demands of English football will be a different proposition entirely. Barcola cannot simply be plugged into Salah's old talisman role and expected to reproduce the same absurd availability, week after week, without consequence.
Liverpool are on the verge of buying a player capable of replicating some of Salah's explosiveness, his technical brilliance, even, perhaps, his ruthlessness in front of goal. What they won't be buying, though, is another Mo Salah.
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND - AUGUST 23: Andoni Iraola manager / head coach of Liverpool reacts during the Premier League 2026/27 match between Newcastle United and Liverpool FC at St James' Park on August 23, 2026 in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. (Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)
Andoni Iraola must manage Barcola's minutes carefully(Image: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA, Getty Images)
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That distinction matters. Because the temptation will be to ask Barcola to fill the Egyptian's boots in as comprehensive a way as possible. To play 90 minutes twice a week. To start every important game. To become a permanent supplier of magic and goals rather than a player who needs to be managed carefully. Iraola must resist it.
If he tries to squeeze Salah-level availability out of a player who has never previously been asked to provide it, the problem won't be whether Barcola can handle the workload, it will be how long Liverpool can get away with pretending he can.
And perhaps that's the real adjustment Liverpool must make. Salah wasn't just a cog in a team - he distorted the very idea of what that position could demand. His replacement does not need to be Salah 2.0. He needs to be Barcola, at his most explosive, most dangerous and, crucially, most available when it matters.
After all, there's little point having a £120m Ferrari if you insist on driving it everywhere like a delivery van. Liverpool's challenge is not to wring every last minute out of Barcola - it's to make sure that, when the big games arrive and the season has reached its final, unforgiving stretch, there's still plenty of electricity left in the battery.
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