Exclusive: Ex-Red weighs in on whether Liverpool should react to Manchester City’s signing of Erling Haaland

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Stan Collymore has claimed that Liverpool don’t need to react to Manchester City’s signing of Erling Haaland.

The Norwegian will join the Sky Blues in the summer after they splashed out £86m to Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund for the 21-year-old.

But despite Pep Guardiola further strengthening his already talented squad, the ex-Red claimed ‘we do things at Liverpool for us’ and insisted there’s no need for the Reds to react with their own big transfer.

“It’s been a fantastic Premier League, a very competitive league, and the two best teams I think in world football are the two top teams in the Premier League,” the ex-Red told Empire of The Kop.

“When you buy a player of the calibre of Haaland, the temptation, not just for the likes of Liverpool, but for Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Spurs, is to feel from their supporter base that they need to react.

“But as Jurgen Klopp has intimated really, we do things at Liverpool for us, we don’t do it to react to what Manchester City are doing or what Manchester United are doing and that’s the way it should be.”

Haaland has 85 goals in 88 appearances for the German club and he’ll now begin the next stage of his career at the club where his father, Alf-Inge, made 38 appearances.

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Collymore also named two players that he believes the Merseysiders should be interested in if they are to react to the Manchester club’s transfer business.

The 51-year-old highlighted the midfield department as a key area that may be focussed on by the recruitment team in the coming months.

“As a direct response, if Liverpool are looking to park their tanks on the lawn of Manchester City and say, ‘okay, you’ve got a bottomless pot of cash, we’re quite cash rich as well, we’ve got owners that will fund the club, we’ve got the cash out as Liverpool Football Club, one of the great clubs in Europe, to be able to attract players’, I would certainly be thinking of the likes of Jude Bellingham, I would certainly be thinking of the likes of Kalvin Phillips,” Collymore said.

“A younger, more dynamic defensive midfielder, orthodox midfielder, whatever you call it, I think would be a fantastic response by Liverpool Football Club to Erling Haaland’s transfer.”

Bellingham has recently announced that he’s remaining in the Bundesliga with Dortmund next season, which at just 18-years-old may not be the worst decision for the teenager.

He can continue developing whilst playing in a quality league against quality opponents.

He is believed to be attracting interest from clubs around Europe and with the potential he’s showing, it would be nice to see him in the famous Red shirt one day.

We’ll see what happens in the summer transfer window, but as Klopp has proved since arriving at the club in 2015, the answer isn’t always to splash the cash.

#Ep50 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: Can Liverpool win the Champions League without Fabinho? Do we react to City’s Haaland signing?… & more! 

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