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This article is part of Football FanCast's Transfer Focus series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent transfer news...

According to Sky Sports, Liverpool are not looking to sell Dejan Lovren this summer amid interest from Italian giants AC Milan.

What's the word, then?

Well, the Reds seem to be keen to hold on to the Croatian international this summer, despite Lovren seemingly being amongst the names of interest to Milan this summer as reported by Sky Italy.

The 29-year-old joined the club in a £20m deal from Southampton back in 2014, but currently finds himself behind Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip in the Liverpool pecking order.

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Injury issues also disrupted his 2018/19 campaign, in which he became a Champions League winner for the first time - Lovren made just 18 appearances for Jurgen Klopp last term.

The perfect time to cash in

The World Cup runner-up literally turns 30 tomorrow, and every passing month where he isn't playing football whilst getting older, his value is decreasing.

He offered very little to the Reds last season in terms of availability and on-field performances having missed 13 games through injury and a total of 109 days, whilst fans blamed him for the significant loss to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium - there's a case to be made for their season panning out similarly to how it did even if Lovren wasn't even there.

Furthermore, Michael Edwards took another step in securing the future of the club this summer in spending an initial £1.3m to bring Sepp van den Berg to Anfield, a young prospect who joins Ki-Jana Hoever as another exciting young centre-back in the Liverpool ranks having already made his first-team debut for the club at 16.

These young players won't be able to develop their obviously huge potential sat on the sidelines, so FA Cup and Carabao Cup games are vital for their progression - these are the games that Lovren would presumably be playing in given his status as fourth choice, so it can be argued that his presence would hinder Hoever and van den Berg's pathway into the first team.

It seems pointless to keep a player as surplus as Lovren is around when they are of interest to another club, especially when it feels unlikely that the defender will ever move up in the pecking order at Anfield again.

This is the ideal time to move the Croatian on.