According to The Times journalist Paul Joyce, Zenit Saint Petersburg are interested in signing Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren this summer.

What's the word?

The Croatia international has hardly featured for Jurgen Klopp's side this season, making just 15 appearances across all competitions. In fact, since the Premier League's restart, barring the 21 minutes he played when he came on as a substitute against Everton, Lovren has not taken to the field since.

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Now, Joyce has revealed that Russian giants Zenit are interested in making a move for the centre-back, although he did provide an update on his contract situation too.

The journalist claimed that the Reds have an additional year's option on Lovren's deal, which means he is now effectively contracted to the club until 2022. This is to protect his market value, with Joyce claiming that interested clubs like Zenit thought he only had one year left.

Ruthless

Perhaps still best known for his claims that he could count himself amongst the best defenders in the world back in 2018, Lovren just hasn't seen much game-time in the last couple of seasons.

The signing of Virgil van Dijk, and the emergence of Joe Gomez in particular has relegated him to just a rotation option for Klopp, with the Liverpool boss of course also being able to call upon Joel Matip in the centre of defence too.

And with Lovren supposedly earning £100k-a-week, Zenit's interest in the defender gives Klopp the perfect chance to end his misery and hand him the opportunity to start afresh elsewhere.

Lovren is simply rotting on the bench at the moment, and it's doing no good for him or the club as a whole. It seems like the perfect time for both sides to go their separate ways.