Jürgen Klopp has said Liverpool would have already signed a solution to their injury problems if one was available in the transfer market and will only ever move for “the right player”.
Liverpool started the season with a lengthy injury list that now includes Thiago Alcântara after he suffered a serious hamstring problem in the opening-day draw at Fulham. The midfielder is expected to be sidelined for between four to six weeks.
Klopp claims Liverpool are unlikely to buy again this summer, having signed Darwin Núñez, Fábio Carvalho and Calvin Ramsay early in the window, but insists that is due to a lack of available options rather than stubbornness on his part.
“I am happy with the strength, size and quality of my squad,” said the Liverpool manager, whose team host Crystal Palace on Monday.
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“We have injuries, that’s how it is. Now it is a question of how long the players will be out for and there [are] different solutions for it. One of them is the transfer market but the transfer market only makes sense if you can bring in the right player. The right player, not a player.
“If we bring in the right player then it could make sense but we always would have done that from the first day of the transfer window or the first day of preseason. In some cases it was not possible and in other cases extremely difficult. That is why you don’t have to think a lot about it.
“All the other solutions are inside the squad. We have now too many injuries, that is clear, but Naby [Keïta] will be back for Monday and Kostas (Tsimikas) will train the first time today so he might be back as well.”
Klopp ruled out making additions to his midfield before losing Thiago, Curtis Jones and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to injury, with a move for Borussia Dortmund’s Jude Bellingham expected next summer, and that stance appears unlikely to change.
He added: “If there was the right solution for us, we would have done it already. We are not stubborn and say ‘No, no way, we don’t bring in anyone’. It is just the right thing to do. When people told me at the beginning of the season we lack a specific kind of midfielder I didn’t understand that because if you search for these specific things then you always lack something.
“If you have technical players then you miss the fighter, if you have the fighter then you miss the technical player. It was always like this: if there would be the right player and there was the opportunity we would have done it, we would do it, but I don’t see it because we have had a lot of conversations already and it doesn’t look like something will happen.” – Guardian
