Christian Benteke will complete his £32.5m move from Aston Villa to Liverpool today, with the club awaiting offers that will see Rickie Lambert and Fabio Borini leave.
The arrival of Benteke, 24, will take the club's spending this summer to more than £75m on seven players, with the £49m earned by Raheem Sterling's sale to Manchester City making up the vast majority of incoming funds. The emphasis now is on making some space in Brendan Rodgers' playing squad.
There is interest from West Bromwich Albion in Lambert and West Ham have indicated they want to sign Borini, but there has been no formal offer from either club. Lambert would be available for around £3m, just a year after he arrived. Borini could be worth more, with the potential for him to command a fee of around £8m.
The striker Mario Balotelli is also another whom Liverpool would like to move on this summer. At the moment the likelihood is that he will get a loan move towards the end of the window, with an option to sign him permanently agreed with his new club. The Italian stirred controversy among Liverpool fans yesterday when he tweeted his congratulations to Raheem Sterling for his first goal for Manchester City, describing it as the “best answer”.
Benteke underwent a medical in London yesterday while Liverpool arrived in Kuala Lumpur ahead of the final game in their pre-season tour of Asia, on Friday against a Malaysia XI. Benteke's first game for his new club could be the friendly against HJK Helsinki in Finland a week on Saturday. – The Independent