Barcelona owe approximately £97m in transfer fees and 'cannot afford Sterling'

LaLiga giants Barca are in financial disarray and lost their best ever player, Lionel Messi, during the summer as they could not pay his wages, despite his offer of a 50 per cent pay cut.

Antoine Griezmann was offloaded back to Atletico Madrid and the club have started the season with a glut of awful results as pressure mounts on boss Ronald Koeman.

They have won just three of their opening seven LaLiga matches and are now ninth in the standings, five points off Real and Atletico.

Their struggles are epitomised by the financial chaos off the pitch.

Marca claim the club still owes £97million for signings that were completed as far back as four years ago.

Ajax are owed £40.8m by Barca for the signings of Frenkie de Jong (£27.2m outstanding) and Sergino Dest (£13.6m outstanding).

The Catalan's also still owe Liverpool £11m for Phillipe Coutinho despite signing him in 2018, while they still need to pay Serie A giants Juventus £33.2m for the signing of Bosnian central midfielder Miralem Pjanic, who only started six games last season.

The club have been linked with a January switch for Man City and England star Raheem Sterling, who has fallen out of favour at the Etihad, but that is not a realistic transfer for many reasons.

Former Manchester United and Tottenham forward Terry Gibson admitted the club can't even add any star names to their ranks or part ways with Koeman.

"They're saying that they'll have €60m to spend in the transfer market, I don't think that gets Raheem Sterling," he told talkSPORT.

"Other clubs would be interested for that fee."

On Koeman's predicament, he added: "They're looking round at other people and there are managers that they wish to bring to the club, but it's about convincing those players that it's a good job to come into."