Barcelona's hopes of signing Philippe Coutinho look to be diminishing after Liverpool rejected a second bid for their star midfielder.

The Reds are standing firm in their desire to keep Coutinho and turned down Barca's £90million offer for him on Wednesday evening.

Any move may now be dependent on Coutinho himself forcing Liverpool's hand, but Catalan paper Sport claims this will not happen.

They say the playmaker, 25, will not hand in a transfer request and that, while he does want to move to the Nou Camp, he only wants to switch clubs if a deal can be done amicably.

Barcelona's latest offer comes after news that the Brazilian could miss the start of the season after he missed training with a back problem that has sidelined him for the past week.

The increasingly intense campaign from Barcelona to destabilise his position at Anfield looks unlikely to abate before the season gets underway.

There are still three weeks of the transfer window remaining and Liverpool will almost certainly have to rebuff one more approach before the end of the month.