Liverpool are in danger of being hit with a transfer ban at academy level following claims they tapped up a Stoke City schoolboy.
The Premier League are investigating claims that the 12-year-old was offered a banned inducement, with the serious allegation that Liverpool reneged on an agreement to pay his school fees.
The transfer dates back to last summer. Stoke had been paying the boy’s school fees and Liverpool indicated they would do the same, up until the age of 16, if he joined them.
But that was a breach of a rule introduced last summer forbidding the practice unless a club offers to pay for all schoolchildren at their academy to be educated privately.