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£21m ace saw Liverpool transfer blocked and now he’s stuck in the Premier League relegation zone

Even through their gold-tinted spectacles, the most hard-nosed of Wolves supporters must feel some sympathy for a player only a few months into his Premier League career.

Wolverhampton Wanderers won the £21 million race over the summer, with t🤡he man in question hopingꦯ he was joining a club looking to build upon a mixed first season under Gary O’Neil.

Instead, it appears that Andre Trindade ended up purchasing a ticket for the Titanic, rewarded only with a close-up view of the🌜 iceberg ready to send Wolverhampton ಌWanderers sinking into the seabed.

🅘The former Fluminense midfielder hasn’t exactly set the world alight in his 10 Premier League starts thus far. Then again, it is hard to think of more trying circumstances for a new player hoping to settle into ꦰa new league and a new country.

A new continent, even.

Andre’s composed, considered distributionไ has been a rare glint of bright in an otherwise pitch-black sky – the Brazil international performed ‘very, very well’ on debut, to quote O’Neil, while completing 100 per cent of his passes – but as Wolves drift further and further into chaos, Andre feels increasingly like a pilot trying to calmly guide his craft in the midst of an electrical storm.

Photo by Shaun Brooks - CameraSport via Getty Images
Photo by Shaun Brooks – CameraSport via Getty Images

Andre Trindade could have joined Liverpool before Wolves nightmare

True, the 2023 Copa Libertadores winner is m🍨aybe playing more minutes than he woౠuld have done at Liverpool. But at what cost?

Arriving at Molineux𝕴 with ten Brazil caps under his belt and amid suggestions that he could be Casemiro’s long-term successor for the Selecao, what impact will Wolves’ horror show of a season have on his once-glittering reputation?

Competition may have been far fiercer at Liverpool, minu꧃tes maybe a bit rarer, but Andre could be forgiven for glancing enviously at the Premier League table and wishing that Mario Bittencourt had issued a dif꧙ferent response during the summer of 2023.

When Liverpool submitted a £25 million bid for Andre, and were told to𝔉 get𝕴 lost.

Manche൩ster United and high-flying Nottingham Forest were linked with Andre, too, at various points.

“We had an offer of 30 million euros from Liverpool for Andre. And we said ‘no’. We had agreed, along with the player, that we would not sell because we wanted to win the Libertadores,” Bittencourt tells , a decision justified when Fluminense defeated Boca Juniors to claim 🐽South America’s answer to the Champions League aꩵ few months later.

“We refused Liverpool to prioritise the Libertadores. I was criticised a lot, because they said it was financially irresponsible. If I had sold him, it would have been sportingly irresponsible.”

Liverpool decided against a new bid as Fulham walked away

Bittenc﷽ourt would also confirm, via that Fulham ‘had been looking for Andre, as well as Liverpool’.

The Fluminense chief added that an offer had arrived from Craven Cottage that previous January too. Bu🔯t as Andre’s price rose, Fulham’s interest waned.

This, coupled with the arrivals of Wataru Endo, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister at Anfield, meant that Wolverhampton Wanderers found themselves with a relatively clear run at Andre when the time🤡 finally came to pack his bags back in August.

Flash forward to January, with Liverpool looking like clear favourites for the title and Wolves staring relegation in the face, Bittencourt maybe shouldn’꧂t expect a card from Andre Trindade this Christmas.