Liverpool remain confident they will keep hold of prized asset Philippe Coutinho, despite Barcelona’s belief that they are close to landing him.

Reds sources are insistent they do not want to sell, but they admit that they do have a fight to keep hold of him this summer.

Football INDEX Watch – Philippe Coutinho £3.46 – Looks very good value still,  but be interesting to see where he ends up and will he increase by a lot if he moves to Barcelona?

Coutinho’s camp are publicly keeping quiet, but I understand that the player has made it clear to Liverpool’s hierarchy that he wants to leave.

Barcelona have made one official approach already, which was rejected, but they will return this week with an offer of around £90million – knowing that the player wants to move to the Nou Camp – although they may have to go above £100million to get the deal done, despite Liverpool’s ongoing insistence that they will not sell for any price.

The 25-year-old is being lined up to help fill the gap vacated by Neymar, who joined Paris Saint Germain last week, and Barca see him along with Borussia Dortmund’s Ousmane Dembele as ideal to fill the void.

Dembele, like Coutinho, is understood to have agreed to make the move and now Barca are trying to hammer out a deal with Dortmund – like with Liverpool, but the feeling in Catalunya is that both players will soon be in Barcelona colours.

We spoke with PaddyPower about the market around Coutinho and Dembele, and they make them both odds-on to be on the move to Barca.

Spokesman Paddy Power said: “All the debate has been around whether Barcelona would replace Neymar with Coutinho or Ousmane Dembele.

“Well, we make BOTH of them odds-on to join this window. Which is certainly one way of blowing £200million.”

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