Former Liverpool defender Daniel Agger has outlined an attempt Manchester City once made to sign him.
Agger has been in the news this week after interviewing with John Aldridge’s ‘Aldo Meets Podcast’. One of the more eye-opening segments is when the former Liverpool man opens up on a one-time transfer battle between City and Barcelona.
“It was a strange one,” admits the Dane. “I remember I got presented for all these things and the club asked me what I was going to do and I said ‘If you want me here, I will stay’. But I said ‘If you don’t want me, if you don’t see me as part of your future I think it’s time that I go because I want to play football. I prefer to do it here but if you don’t think I’m good enough then I would like to go because these offers are on the table and I don’t know if I will have them next year.”
“I don’t know the story from their side, I think they agreed a price [with Barcelona] and they accepted it and came to me and said ‘This is it’, I said ‘Okay fair enough’. But then from the side, another offer came in, which was a lot higher, which they accepted and I didn’t want to go to that club.
“I said ‘If you want to sell me I go down there [to Barcelona] otherwise I don’t go’. And another offer came in from the same club [Man City], higher, and my feeling was that the club wanted me to go because it was a lot of money back then. I said ‘There’s no chance I’m going to that club, so better just stop now’.”
“That club being Man City,” asked Aldridge. “Yeah,” replied Agger. Fascinating stuff.
Agger recalls Man City rejection
This is good to hear from Agger and gives a little insight into just how much he loves Liverpool.
The issue was not necessarily with the Reds’ burgeoning rivalry with City, it was more to do with the fact that the centre-back didn’t want to play for another side in England.
Such was his respect for Liverpool, Agger was not prepared to come up against them on the pitch at all.
As a result, he turned down the possibility of adding many more trophies than he eventually won at Anfield to his collection. You’ve got to respect that.
From a Liverpool point of view, it’s disappointing to hear that the club were willing to offload one of their best players to a rival. But Liverpool was run very differently back then.
Although we can’t put an exact date on the situation Agger is talking about, it seems like it was potentially in 2013, a year before his eventual exit.
With Brendan Rodgers not fancying the former Denmark international, he probably saw the chance to recoup a fair sum. However, it was still a poor situation, which was replicated when Raheem Sterling swapped Anfield for the Etihad in 2014.
Fast forward nine years and you’d like to think that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen anymore. Liverpool are in a much better place and are battling City on a more even footing. Back then that wasn’t the case, so fair play to Dan. Once a Red, always a Red big man!
