Whether it's Alonso or Amorim, there's one transfer Liverpool must complete

Liverpool reportedly want to hire one of Xabi Alonso or Ruben Amorim as their new manager but regardless of who arrives, there’s one transfer Richard Hughes must make.

Xabi Alonso and Ruben Amorim are unquestionably the two main candidates for the Liverpool job this summer. The pair of them have worked wonders at Bayer Leverkusen and Sporting CP respectively - now the Reds want one of them.

That makes transfers difficult. The planning should happen now but when you don't know who your manager will be, what can you do? Richard Hughes, will joins as sporting director on June 1st, will have ideas in his head right now - and he'll certainly want to lay some groundwork before officially taking the Liverpool job.

But without even knowing the system the Reds will be playing, it's hard to do that.

However, thanks to one major similarity between the two managers, there is one transfer Liverpool can focus on.

Liverpool will want a centre-back in the transfer window

Both Alonso and Amorim have found their success by playing three-at-the-back formations. It's fairly certain, then, that they'd want to try and replicate that at Liverpool.

The Reds don't really have enough centre-backs on the books to make it work, though. Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konaté, Joe Gomez, Joel Matip and Jarell Quansah are all in the squad but five may not be enough.

Compounding the need to sign a new centre-back is the fact that Matip is out of contract this summer. There's certainly no guarantee that he'll get a new deal, while his injury this season means Liverpool may not want to treat him as a reliable option even if he does renew.

Thus Liverpool will want a new centre-back this summer. It feels absolutely certain and both Leverkusen and Sporting have very strong options should the Reds look there.

They've been linked with Sporting pair Goncalo Inacio and Ousmane Diomande for a little while now. Leverkusen's Piero Hincapie is another fairly consistently linked with the Reds, too.

So while the summer is a confusing one, there's at least one starting point for this summer's business. A centre-back pretty much has to be on the agenda.