Dele Alli - who looks more like a young Art Garfunkel than you originally thought - could have been lighting up Anfield, rather than White Hart Lane, had things worked out slightly differently.
Alli had always looked set to join Liverpool when leaving MK Dons: he grew up a Liverpool fan, with posters of Steven Gerrard grimacing at him from his bedroom walls. His manager at MK Dons, Karl Robinson, is a Scouser, who came through at Liverpool. And finally, Liverpool were interested in signing Alli: one of the few things Brendan Rodgers complained about on his media tour before taking the Celtic job was Liverpool's failure to get the deal done.
Exactly what went wrong has been unclear up to now, but Alli has provided more detail on how Liverpool didn't seal the deal in an interview with BBC show Football Focus.
Included in Liverpool's plan to convince Alli to sign was a meeting with Steven Gerrard, but that didn't quite go to plan, as Alli told the BBC.
At the time when I was at MK there was contact with Liverpool before I signed for Tottenham, but that was before we’d even spoke to Tottenham. I think it was six months before.
We went up there and I think they knew that Steven Gerrard was my hero, so they said he was going to come down to meet me, but when I got there he was asleep apparently.
I think he had a game the next day though so I understand.
Obviously Liverpool should still have got the deal over the line despite this, so it's not the only reason the deal fell through. Nonetheless, it has proved a costly bit of shut-eye for Stevie.
