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

According to Fotomac, Besiktas officials are to travel to Liverpool to try and complete a permanent transfer for goalkeeper Loris Karius.

What's the story?

The 26-year-old was signed from Mainz 05 in 2016 before moving to the Super Lig side in 2018 on loan. Since then, he has made 49 appearances for the Turkish club.

It appears that the side from Istanbul want to sign the former Germany U21 international in January. They will travel to England to speak to the Reds, with a fee of €8.5m (£7.2m) mentioned.

Miracles do happen

Karius only cost the Merseyside outfit £4.7m, but even that has been too much of a price to pay for the way the German performed during his time at Anfield. At Liverpool, he averaged a save percentage rate of just 66.2%, which is not good enough for a goalkeeper at a top team. The stats, though, only tell part of the story.

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He made several high-profile mistakes during his time with the Reds, but it is his performance in the 2018 Champions League final that will remain long in the memory. Gareth Bale did score one absolute stunner that no goalkeeper on the planet would have stopped. However, both of the other goals in a 3-1 loss were the goalkeeper's fault.

Firstly, he inexplicably threw the ball at Karim Benzema's foot, with it then ending up in the net, whilst he somehow fumbled Bale's long-range effort as well. It may have been hard to see him in tears after the match, but there was no way back for him from that.

It is not as though he has even been that impressive in Turkey. In those 49 matches, he has conceded 69 goals and kept just 11 clean sheets. The high-profile errors haven't stopped, either, as we saw in Besiktas' Europa League fixture with Slovan Bratislava.

All of this, therefore, makes it absolutely flabbergasting as to how they could now be in line for a £7.2m transfer fee.

That would be an increase of £2.6m, and it is hard to see what Karius has done to warrant that rise. Michael Edwards deserves a medal if he can get this deal through.