Barcelona see Liverpool as the most likely buyer for winger Ousmane Dembele but the Catalan club are sceptical about their chances of recouping anywhere near the money already spent on the 21-year-old.
Barcelona paid £96million to Borussia Dortmund last summer and are currently making their way though an additional £35million of add-on payments.
They paid a further £4.5m once the player passed 25 appearances and a further £4.5m when the club qualified for this season's Champions League.
The remaining £26million will be paid out when he reaches 50, 75 and 100 appearances, when the club qualify for next season's Champions League, and if they win the competition.
Offloading Dembele in January would mean avoiding most of that remaining £26million and it would also remove 12m euros in salary from the wage bill.
But for all his minor breaches of club discipline the French international is still seen as very useful to coach Ernesto Valverde as Barca try to win three trophies and only if Liverpool come close to matching the original £96million outlay – thus saving some face for Barcelona – will they part company with the player in the middle of the season.
They do not believe Liverpool – a clever transfer market operator in recent years - will make such a high bid for a player whose value is dropping fast and could continue to tumble towards next summer.
Liverpool's most recent dealings with Barcelona have involved selling not buying with sales of Luis Suarez and Philippe Coutinho that saw them very much close the deals on their terms.
The club finally sold Coutinho in the January transfer window of 2018 for a fee that could end up totalling £142 million. They claimed this was an improvement on the previous summer when Liverpool were demanding 200m euros.
Football Leaks documents published in Der Spiegel refuted that claim with emails suggesting Liverpool told Barcelona the player was not for sale at any price.
It would be a major role reversal if Liverpool moved for Dembele this January with the kind of price that Barcelona would be open to accepting.
The club are hoping that he can be reincorporated into the squad and the first team, be part of success this season, and then sold next summer.
Coach Valverde left him out of the squad last weekend after Dembele did not show up to training two days before and the club could not track him down.
Eventually he was located at home and he excused himself for having missed the session complaining of a stomach bug.
When asked why he had not called to inform the club he said his phone had no battery.
A club doctor was sent to his home and according to Diario AS 'the player had recovered significantly from his stomach problem' when the club official arrived.
France coach Didier Deschamps said this week that the player's tardiness was habitual. The Barcelona dressing room are trying to help the player get back on track.
'We have to help him realise that football is a 24-hour thing. And that sometimes it's not just about doing [your job] but also appearing to,' said Gerard Pique this week.
'We have all been young and we have all made mistakes. I am convinced he will improve,' he added.
Manager Valverde has also spoken about Dembele's attitude when he is on the pitch: 'Everyone loses the ball, the question is what you do after you lose it,' he said.
Having watched the player for over a year Barcelona's technical staff fear that his style of play and apparent inability to take certain concepts on board will always make it hard for him to be a constant in the first XI and that being in and out of the side is provoking off-the-field problems.
They are aware of Jurgen Klopp's admiration for a player he coach at Dortmund. And they recognize that he might have more chance of continued success playing in another team. The club needs to pick the right time to sell.
One columnist in midweek wrote about the counter-productivity of dropping him from the squad and making his indiscretions so public.
Joan Maria Battle used a joke to make his point writing in Diario Sport - 'A man sells a horse to his friend telling him he can make coffee, fetch the paper, cook dinner and win every horse race he enters.
'When the gullible buyer next sees his friend he starts shouting at him in the street: the horse wont make coffee, fetch the paper, cook and it can't run 100m without stopping.
'Keep your voice down,' his friend says. 'If you keep talking like that no-one will be daft enough to buy him off you.'
