Yankuba Minteh’s Deadline-Day Move to Liverpool Unlikely

Yankuba Minteh’s camp are still pushing for a dramatic deadline-day move to Liverpool – but the clock, and the circumstances, are firmly against them.

The Brighton winger has been on the Reds’ radar throughout August, his name repeatedly surfacing as Liverpool weighed up options on the right flank. Brighton’s stance has never really shifted: £80m or nothing. Two bids from Merseyside have already been knocked back, the latest understood to be £60m, and the Seagulls have held their line.

Price tag: £80m

That price tag is no small part of the story. Neither is Liverpool’s wider attacking picture.

Agents pushing, door barely open

On Tuesday morning, reporter Ben Jacobs told talkSPORT, via GIVEMESPORT, that Minteh’s representatives are still working to engineer a move to Anfield before the 11pm deadline. They “hope that it happens today,” he said, underlining that the player’s camp have not given up on what would be a blockbuster switch.

Yet even as he laid out their optimism, Jacobs added the reality check: with Cody Gakpo staying at Liverpool, the deal is “unlikely” to materialise.

That single decision – to keep Gakpo – changes the entire equation.

Gakpo the hinge point

Liverpool have turned down an £80m offer from Manchester City for Gakpo in the last 24 hours, according to The Athletic. The bid matches Brighton’s valuation of Minteh. In pure numbers, it could have been a straight swap of sorts: Gakpo out, Minteh in, the books roughly balanced.

But football isn’t played on spreadsheets.

Gakpo has started the season sharply, with a goal and an assist in his first two games. He is fit, integrated, and delivering. Minteh, by contrast, is out injured for the foreseeable future. Paying the same fee to replace a productive, available forward with one who cannot currently play would be a hard sell in any recruitment meeting.

Liverpool have also sounded out Ismaila Sarr of Crystal Palace as another right-sided option, yet the landscape has shifted there too. With Gakpo staying and Bradley Barcola already arriving from Paris Saint-Germain, the urgency to add yet another winger has drained away.

A crowded wing

Look at the depth chart. If Minteh somehow did arrive today and none of Liverpool’s current forwards left, Andoni Iraola would be staring at six senior wingers fighting for two starting spots. From a manager’s perspective, that is a dream for rotation and competition. From a squad harmony standpoint, it is a minefield.

Minutes would be tight. Egos would need managing. Someone, probably several someones, would be unhappy.

That reality sits alongside the financial and fitness questions around Minteh. Taken together, they explain why Liverpool, despite long-standing interest, have not smashed through Brighton’s £80m barrier.

Hope versus reality

Minteh’s agents are unlikely to stop trying in these final hours. Deadline day is built on late calls, sudden green lights, and deals that seem impossible right up until the moment they are not.

But this one, at this stage, looks boxed in from every angle: price, injury, squad balance, and the firm decision to keep Gakpo.

Football has a habit of springing a twist when everyone has turned away from the screen. Unless that happens here, the 22-year-old Gambian looks set to remain a Brighton player for the rest of 2026, his Anfield dream parked on ice rather than completely extinguished.