The £50m wonderkid who dazzled his way onto Liverpool and Arsenal’s transfer radar
A young playmaker who has made waves in Turkey could be a transfer target for Liverpool and Arsenal - but is he worth £50m or the PR problems which might follow?
For obvious reasons, it’s been a little while since the Premier League last had a Russian player. With sanctions imposed since the invasion of Ukraine making any transfer dealings between English and Russian sides almost impossible, any thoughts of acquiring talent from Europe’s pariah state have been put to one side. Until now, perhaps.
New reports suggest that Liverpool and Arsenal are the latest sides to show an interest in gifted attacking midfielder Aleksey Batrakov, who moved to Galatasaray over the summer and seems increasingly likely to move on at some speed given his form in Turkey. So just how good is Batrakov – and how likely is it that he ends up in England in the near future?
Liverpool & Arsenal among teams chasing Aleksey Batrakov – reports
According to TEAMtalk journalist Graeme Bailey, Arsenal and Liverpool are the latest teams to start the process of monitoring Batrakov, whose performances since signing for Galatasaray have attracted a growing list of admirers.
Chelsea and both Manchester sides are also said to have shown interest in the 21-year-old, while PSG apparently considered a bid for him while he was still at former club Lokomotiv Moscow.
It was Galatasaray who took the plunge and signed him for a reported €25m (£21m) after he was named the Russian Premier League’s Young Player of the Year for a second successive season at the end of the 2025/26 campaign. He’s already started paying that faith back – scoring twice and providing two assists in his first nine appearances.
The teams he’s scoring against – Barcelona and Lille in the Champions League – have also helped him to turn heads. His goalscoring record for Lokomotiv Moscow was formidable with 33 goals in just 78 senior games before leaving, but there was also a doubt as to how his talents might translate to a higher level. At first glance, it would seem that they translate very well indeed.
Under normal circumstances, of course, it would be some time before other teams seriously thought about making a bid for Batrakov given how recently he signed a five-year contract with a new club, but according to TEAMtalk he has a release clause baked into that deal which makes a quick move far more plausible.
Teams from England, Italy, Spain and Germany can apparently trigger that clause with an offer of around £50m. It’s a significant sum, but given his age and talent, it’s not beyond the reach of sides like Arsenal and Liverpool should he continue to impress with Galatasaray and with his national side, for whom he already has 15 caps.
Both Liverpool and Arsenal allegedly had scouts watching Batrakov during recent matches, the first part of a process that is more likely to reach a conclusion next summer than in January, given the two teams’ current priorities and transfer budgets.
Any deal for a Russian player would likely bring some degree of controversy with it, although that would be eased by the fact that he wouldn’t be coming to England directly from Moscow. But between a potential PR headache and a £50m price tag, clubs like Arsenal and Liverpool may think long and hard to work out whether Batrakov is worth it. Based purely on his talent, however, it’s possible that they decide that he is.
Why are so many clubs scouting Aleksey Batrakov?
Although very young, Batrakov is, in many ways, a very traditional type of attacking midfielder – a playmaker and goalscorer who operates almost entirely in pockets of space between the halfway line and the opposing penalty area, a classical number 10 who is all killer passes and late runs into the box.
In Russia, his productivity was quite remarkable. After breaking into Lokomotiv’s first team in time for the start of the 2024/25 campaign, he scored 15 goals and provided nine assists in his first season before improving both tallies to 17 and 10 respectively the next. He became the darling of Russian football in next to no time.
He does have his weaknesses, and is not as adroit with the ball at his feet as many of his peers around the continent. In an era in which the ability to break defensive lines by carrying the ball is highly prized, Batrakov’s skillset, which focusses far more on passing than on dribbling, may not suit every team’s system.
He makes up for that deficiency with an exceptional eye for a killer pass and the precision to back his vision up, the knack for timing his relatively rare forays into the box perfectly – he scores most of his goals from inside the area despite spending most of his time in deeper areas – and an impressive work rate which means that he plays an effective role in the high press.
On and off the ball, Batrakov ticks a number of boxes, and if he can maintain his early-career scoring record in Turkey and in the Champions League then a big transfer probably won’t take too long to come about. The talent is there. The question is which teams decides to take the plunge, and when.