WC: More than a few eye-brows will have been raised today when Liverpool finally completed their £25m deal to sign England’s dynamic midfielder Adam Lallana, as his former club Southampton continue their extraordinary fire sale of their best and brightest talents ahead of a new season under Ronald Koeman. Not least of those eyebrows belonged to Newcastle manager Alan Pardew, Lallana’s former boss at Southampton, who decried the price-tag (as well as that which took fellow former Saint Luke Shaw to Manchester United last week), and there might well be something in his claims that domestic players are simply too expensive for mid-table sides.
