Liverpool secured a decisive victory against West Ham United in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday evening.
Michail Antonio, the West Ham striker, has indicated that if Liverpool are interested in acquiring Jarrod Bowen, they should be prepared to “bring the money.”
During West Ham’s recent 5-1 loss to Liverpool at Anfield, Bowen found the net and garnered praise from Liverpool’s manager, Jurgen Klopp, prior to the match.
Klopp expressed his admiration for Bowen, labeling him as his “favourite player” outside of his own team. This commendation has sparked speculations about Liverpool’s potential interest in the 27-year-old, especially since Bowen extended his contract with West Ham in October.
Antonio responded to the notion that Klopp might be interested in bringing Bowen to Merseyside by saying: “He [Klopp] can lay seeds all he likes! He’s just signed a seven-year deal. If you want that, bring the money! Are you letting Salah go?”
Antonio was unable to participate in West Ham’s significant defeat at Anfield due to injury. As he sat out, his teammates faced challenges in trying to match Liverpool’s prowess on the field.
Speaking on the Footballer’s Football Podcast, the Jamaican international shared his perspective on the outcome of the Carabao Cup quarter-final match: “I don’t really want to speak about it, to be honest. We didn’t turn up.
“We’ve given you guys a nice little semi-final to go into with some confidence to go and win it. That’s what we wanted to do, to give you that confidence to go on and win it. If you go out, you’ve got to go out to the winners.
“What we did is went 2-0 down and we might as well let it go to five because we wanted to build that confidence for you guys to say ‘We beat West Ham and got five there, no-one else is going to go close to us’.
“Normally when we play you guys, we make it a tricky game and create a few chances. It just wasn’t one of those games. In the first half, we didn’t have a shot at goal and you were just controlling the game.
“We’re just going to have to say it was an extremely bad day. We’ve got to brush our shoulders off. It wasn’t meant to be. Even though we wanted to go further, we have to accept it. It was a complete and utter off-day.”
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