Klopp speaks transfer plans after Lovren sale: ‘The perfect scenario is 40 players available and they are all happy…’ ‘But it doesn’t work like that’

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Jurgen Klopp has spoken in length yet again about Liverpool’s transfer plans this summer and what he thinks the club will be able to do in the market.

Yesterday, we sold both Dejan Lovren to Zenit for £11m and Adam Lallana joined Brighton on a free transfer – with the expectation that Xherdan Shaqiri will also exit when a suitable buyer is found.

Marko Grujic and Harry Wilson will hopefully bolster our coffers, too.

But while Klopp has hinted that more players would be nice, he’s reiterated his point that until there is certainty regarding football’s finances going forward, the club will not make big moves.

“Look, the perfect scenario for a football manager is that you have 40 players available and they are all happy with the situation they are in and then you just pick 20 and say that they don’t need to show up for three weeks and then you pick the other 20,” he told the Standard.

“But it doesn’t work like that. The world is not like this. I did not want to be part of a squad like this to be honest.

“It will be tricky and we have to deal with the circumstances. The situation, as we have said several times, it is really difficult to judge the future. That is always what we have to do. We have to judge the future.

“Usually, we know about the financial funds that we have as much as you can know. At the moment we are qualified for the Champions League and we were qualified pretty early for the Champions League and usually that is good.

“But a few weeks ago nobody knew if we could play Champions League next season again. Can you count on the money of the Champions League and how much will it be? That is all uncertain and that is what we consider because we are not only responsible for the success of the club, we are responsible for all the people at the club and that means everyone who is working here. That is what we try to do.

“As long as we don’t know exactly about things, we have to wait.

“We have a really good squad, we have to see what we can do, we have to see what we have to do, we need still more time. Time will hopefully bring a bit more clarity about the future and then we will make our decisions.

“But the solution cannot be to have a much bigger squad for the specific moment and then realise you cannot use all the players. These players can only play the football they play because they know they are needed.

“They are all human beings and nobody can be held back for a year and then on the last day of the year be told, ‘Now we need you’.

“In between now and then there must be a lot of training and support and challenges and stuff like this. We cannot keep someone in the backyard and bring them up in the decisive moment. That will not help, we will have solutions for that.

“We have young players. The size of the squad is not that important to me, the quality of the squad is very much so. I think we will have a really good squad for next season.”

We know that finances have been affected, but Liverpool have just won the Premier League and will receive plenty for that achievement – as well as the fact the Nike deal is starting and confirmed Champions League money to boot.

The club is at no risk of going out of business or even getting into some kind of predicament if we strengthen the squad this summer – even to the extremely modest sum of £40-50m.

A new left-back is needed – and we’d also suggest a wing-forward who scores goals and has serious pace should be a necessity, too.

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