- Jurgen Klopp and his backroom staff were told by people at the club that Dejan Lovren wasn’t maybe not good enough upon arrival
- But Liverpool’s coaching team decided to try and work on him at Melwood instead
- In two years, the only centre-back Klopp’s spent money on is Ragnar Klavan
- SEE MORE: Emotional Lovren: Get me out of this ‘black cloud’
When Jurgen Klopp, Zeljko Buvac and Peter Krawietz took the helm in 2015, they were told by everybody that Dejan Lovren was a liability.
The centre-back had struggled badly under Brendan Rodgers, who’d signed him from Southampton in summer 2014 for £20m (a much more significant sum than it’s considered now).
This is according to Krawietz, who was quoted in German journalist Raphael Honigstein’s latest book, Bring the Noise, a biography on Jurgen Klopp.
Liverpool’s coach, however, has claimed they decided to stick with the central defender and give him a chance to prove himself at Anfield.
“When we came to LFC everybody told us about his (Lovren) problems, about the things he couldn’t do, but we were determined to look at him with fresh eyes,” he said. “We felt from the very first day that we had a player there, & his development has been great.”
Many Liverpool fans will wince at Krawietz’s notion that the Croat’s improvement has been ‘great’.
He still comes in for extraordinary criticism for his mistakes and actually received death threats earlier this season following his Tottenham horror-show.
The reality is he’s nowhere near as bad as some supporters suggest; the type who similarly scapegoat Alberto Moreno and Jordan Henderson and label them ‘awful players’.
It should be no real surprise that Klopp and his backroom team chose to try and improve Lovren on the training field, as that’s very much his footballing philosophy.
In fairness, Klopp’s Lovren is better than Rodgers’ Lovren – but that doesn’t mean he’s suitable long-term.
Liverpool need a confident centre-back who doesn’t play on emotion as a matter of urgency.