Jürgen Klopp believes that four centre backs will be enough for Liverpool as they begin their final preparations for the new Premier League campaign.
Jürgen Klopp has revealed he thinks four centre backs is enough ahead of the 2017/18 campaign, meaning the Reds may have pulled out of their wild goose chase for Southampton captain Virgil van Dijk.
The Reds had been chasing the £60m rated Dutchman since April, according to most reports, convincing him to join the club and looking as if they’d already won the battle.
Then Southampton brought the war.
The Reds were forced to apologise for ‘tapping up’ the player back in June and haven’t been able to make a move since, preferring to sit back and watch the situation develop from afar.
The Liverpool ECHO report that if Southampton’s stance changes in the next few weeks, the Reds are still prepared to demolish their transfer record for him but publicly, Jürgen Klopp has – rather worryingly – begun shifting focus away from any new incomings.
“We have four (centre-halves). I don’t think we need more,” Klopp said.
“Joe is in a really good way but it was not his day (against Athletic Bilbao). He made his life difficult with a few passes but things like this happen. In the moment I’m fine. We are open until the 31st. We cannot force the things and we would never get a centre-back just because.”
“We have the need, we have some but you don’t take any. It doesn’t work. Look out there and tell me five that would make us stronger, five. Then you win a prize! It’s difficult how it is. I’m happy. You can imagine we still work on different things and we will see if it works.”
“I am here to work with this squad and not just always thinking ‘but if we don’t get this or this’. No. We could play tomorrow. It’s better that we don’t have to but we could play tomorrow.”
While the Reds have continued on from where they left off last season, scoring freely and looking a genuine threat going forward, defensively there is still a lot of work to do. Klopp evidently knows this and hopefully, his recent comments are just a public backing of his players and nothing more.
The Reds may have scored thrice against Athletic Club Bilbao on Saturday but once again, poor errors and decision making led to a soft goal for the Spanish side and while it had no bearing on the result, it’s something Klopp will hope to iron out immediately.
However, while the manager remains bullish about his back four, there is a growing feeling that with Dejan Lovren first choice and Ragnar Klavan his immediate replacement.. it could be easier said than done.
“I don’t see it as a concern. That’s what we have spoken about. We had a meeting this week about the half spaces,” Klopp added about the Bilbao game.
“We gave them a goal in the half spaces but the second half was different. We made some bad passes and made them strong in these moments but we reacted very well. In the first half there was not a lot of protection so really it’s a little bit in between.”
“Would I prefer that we don’t have the issue any more? Probably yes but that’s the thing we have to work on now. The rest is fluent, it looks good, the movements are good. It’s no problem that the game changed, we were flying in the first 25 minutes and then it got more difficult. That’s completely normal.”
“We have to be better organised. The goal we conceded is not a typical goal. It’s a good challenge by Dejan but nobody is around because we already thought he had sorted it. That is a bit of tiredness in the mind, the pre-season has been long.”
“We just came back from the training camp and trained on Friday. Now we rest for the next two days and that’s very important. We will do better when we are fresher.”
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