Mascherano keen on linking up with Tevez again

Liverpool midfielder Javier Mascherano has told his Argentina team-mate Carlos Tevez to join him at Anfield.

Tevez looks set to leave Manchester United in the close-season after the Premier League champions failed to meet the 32 million pounds transfer fee being demanded by the group of investors who own the forward’s economic rights.

Reports in England claim Liverpool are leading the race to sign Tevez and Reds midfielder Mascherano is desperate for the deal to go through.

Argentina captain Mascherano plays alongside Tevez at international level and also had a brief spell with the forward at West Ham in the 2006-07 season, so he knows how much the striker would help Liverpool’s bid to dethrone United next season.

Mascherano said: “It would be great to have Carlos here with me, I know how good he is.

“But I don’t really know what the situation is, it is certainly a difficult one.

“I don’t know exactly what is happening. The only thing I can say is that he is a great player and a great person.”

Mascherano will get the chance to persuade Tevez to move to Liverpool Tevez next month when Argentina have two World Cup qualifiers against Columbia and Ecuador.

He said: “I will be with Carlos in the national team shortly, and we know we have to win important games and if we can get six points from our next two matches we will be closer to the World Cup.”

Whether they can end up at Anfield together next season is a question for Benitez and Liverpool’s American owners.

But it is believed that Tevez does not want to move from his Cheshire home and intends staying in the Premier League if he does eventually leave Manchester United.

Mascherano admits Liverpool’s failure to win the title despite losing only two matches was a massive frustration.

He said: “We wanted to win the league and we were very close, but we accept that Manchester United did very well also.

“It is difficult to take, because if you look at the table and you see Liverpool with 86 points, that’s enough to win the league in many previous seasons.

“Previous champions have had less points than we had this season. But we have to improve, and we will be ready for next season after what has been a good campaign and better than the last four or five seasons beforehand.

“It is not easy knowing you have really good players and you finish only second, it is difficult to understand.

“We will have to see what happens now. We have the squad to compete in the league, but maybe if some new players came to improve the team it would be great for us next season. It does not need improving too much, maybe a little bit.

“We need to improve at home. We dropped a lot of points at home because we didn’t have that experience to finish the games, but next season we will have the experience and maybe it will be better for us.

“You can see against the top sides we almost beat all of them. But at home we dropped a lot of points against Hull, Manchester City and Fulham.

“Winning those points could have won us the league.”