Any Liverpool fans excited at the prospect of Marco Reus, Mats Hummels, Ilkay Gundogan and former Borussia Dortmund striker Robert Lewandowski probably need to hold their horses, despite what the tabloids have been spouting…
BVB chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke has totally dismissed the rumours – claiming that Klopp’s relationship with the club is so tight that he would never try and weaken their squad by signing their players.
“Jurgen would never do anything that would damage BVB’s interests,” Watzke told Bild am Sonntag, reported in Goal.
“I am 100 percent certain about that. He would never approach any players behind our back.
“We are simply too close for things like that to happen. We have been through too much together.”
While issuing the polite warning, Watzke also predicted Klopp will be a major success on Merseyside.
“This is a great move for both Jurgen and Liverpool. He can get them back to greatness. We don’t even have to talk about that,” he added.
“I am convinced that he will be as successful at Liverpool as he was at Dortmund.”
Klopp’s latest comments on the issue support Watzke’s claims, and suggest he’ll be entirely focussed on the players currently at his disposal before trying to bring in new faces.
“That’s not my intention at all. I’m not interested in that,” he said, reported in the Independent, when asked about the possibility of buying Dortmund stars.
“It’s already October and I don’t even know how many matches there are until winter.
“But there are a few and so we’ll be looking at our own players first.”
Instead, Klopp will give his current squad a chance to prove their worth, and German journalist Raphael Honigstein has told the official website that he’ll hit the ground running.
“He doesn’t do half measures, he’s all about all or nothing,” he told LFCTV.
“He will stress again to his players, ‘do not think about the next game only think about this game’, play as if there’s no tomorrow.
“He will make players think.”
“That’s not to be underestimated, if you give somebody food for thought and stimulate the synapses, as he likes to say, that can maybe make your legs work a little bit better as well!”
The first evidence of whether this is true or not will be seen on Saturday lunchtime, with Liverpool travelling to Spurs, who we’ve been much better than in recent matches, for Klopp’s first match in charge.