Liverpool’s special friendship with Southampton was a beautiful thing. The Reds would spent of lots of money, the Saints would lose their best players, the players would become slightly worse, and basically no one was happy. It was great.

But sadly, the relationship seems to be over after this summer’s Virgil van Dijk “tapping up” scandal, which made Saints very angry and meant the Reds had to continue relying on Dejan Lovren at centre-back.

But it’s OK, because Liverpool can simply start a new relationship with a different club full of sexy youngsters – and the one they appear to have chosen is RB Leipzig.

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The Germans have initially been playing hard to get, spending all summer flirting over Naby Keita before finally relenting and letting the Reds have their wicked way with the Guinean midfielder in a year.

Now, tentatively, Jurgen Klopp is prowling around the rest of the Leipzig squad and seeing who else he can get his hands on. He likes the look of the 21-year-old striker Timo Werner, by all accounts. And today there is new starlet in his sights who goes by the tricky-to-pronounce name of Dayot Upamecano.

The Express reports that Klopp is targeting the 18-year-old French centre-back as an alternative to Van Dijk. The teenager only joined the Bundesliga side in January for £8.7m (from RB Salzburg, who else…), so naturally they now want £89m for him.

Upamecano’s buyout clause will be raised to this amount as soon as he puts pen to paper on a new contract, so Liverpool should probably act fast if they wants to buy him for less.

Toffees target Cavani

Another man who could be on his way to Merseyside is Edinson Cavani, whose bust-up with illustrious team-mate Neymar has apparently prompted Paris Saint-Germain to put him up for sale at the Brazilian’s request.

Liverpool don’t want him, but Everton do, according to the Mail. The strikerless Toffees have been “alerted” to the Uruguayan’s potential availability, but they will face competition from Chelsea and Napoli, as well as Real Madrid (Star).

Meanwhile, the proposed Raheem Sterling-Alexis Sanchez transfer swap could be “back on” in January, claims the Mirror.

Arsenal are set to make a “fresh move” for the 22-year-old England international as they continue to seek a replacement for Sanchez. It’s unclear why they think Manchester City will sell them Sterling, who has been in sparkling form, when they could just get Sanchez for free at the end of the season.

Elsewhere, Tottenham and Liverpool are set to go “head to head” to sign 17-year-old Werder Bremen “wonderkid” David Philipp, who is out of contract next summer (Mirror), Arsenal are battling with Borussia Dortmund to sign 19-year-old Marseille left-back Christopher Rocchia in January (Talksport) and the Gunners are also vying with Manchester United, Barcelona and Bayern Munich for Schalke’s highly rated German international midfielder Leon Goretzka (Express). You’ve got to love Arsenal’s plucky optimism in the transfer market.

@darlingkevin