Reported Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur targets Denis Zakaria and Florian Neuhaus are likely to leave Borussia Monchengladbach if they fail to qualify for European competition, as reported by BILD.
Is this merely an unhappy coincidence or something a little more worrying?
It is a month now since the news broke that Marco Rose would be replacing Lucien Favre at Dortmund at the end of the season.
And, in that time, Gladbach have lost five successive games in all competitions, bowing out of the DFB Pokal, spluttering against Manchester City in the Champions League while sliding down the Bundesliga table.
Saturday’s 1-0 home defeat to a similarly out-of-sorts Bayer Leverkusen – seven days after they let a two-goal lead slip to lose at RB Leipzig – means Gladbach are now tenth.
They are ten points adrift of the Champions League places and seven off the Europa League spots.
According to BILD, there is a very real chance that this summer will see an exodus take place unless a remarkable turnaround is on the cards, with Alassane Plea, Marcus Thuram, Matthias Ginter, Zakaria and Neuhaus potentially set to follow Rose out the door.
Sport1 claims that Jose Mourinho’s Spurs are weighing up whether or not to trigger the £36 million release clause in Neuhaus’s contract. The elegant attacking midfielder is also a target for Manchester City and Liverpool (Kicker).
Neuhaus’s Gladbach teammate Zakaria is also on Liverpool’s radar (BILD). A more physical, box-to-box enforcer in the Patrick Vieira mould, the Swiss international recently rejected a new contract.
Striker Plea, meanwhile, has admirers at West Ham, according to the Mirror.
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