Kevin de Bruyne’s injury brings warning sign for Jürgen Klopp

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Manchester City star Kevin de Bruyne’s recent knee injury highlights why Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool spent big over the summer window. 

Jürgen Klopp has described Kevin de Bruyne’s recent knee injury as “awful” and believes that it shows to football fans just why he chose to sanction the big money signings he did over the summer.

While he has avoided the need for surgical repairs, the Belgian midfielder is set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines – believed to be between 3-4 months – after suffering damage to his knee ligaments in training.

As is the character of Liverpool’s manager, where others see this as a boost for the Reds, Klopp has made a point to stress that it is a warning call for his side and is not a positive situation for football as a whole.

The German instead called those celebrating the injury “assholes,” elaborating on his point by explaining: “You hear about Kevin de Bruyne and you think ‘wow!'”

“No-one needs that. It’s awful news. To be honest he was never my player but I love this player. I wanted him at Dortmund but Jose didn’t give him! So it’s really shit news to be honest and it always can happen. You need to be ready to sort that.”

The German has the luxury of a practically fully fit squad when the Reds’ travel to Selhurst Park for their fixture against Crystal Palace on Monday night – Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Dejan Lovren are expected to be the only injury absentees – but Klopp acknowledged this is very rarely the case.

“How many days did we have like this in the last few years?” Klopp reasoned.

“We talked last year probably about our good squad and then probably the next day someone tells me Phil wants to go to Barcelona, whatever.”

“You have it for a minute and then it’s gone. We need to really enjoy the moment but we constantly prepare the solution for problems we don’t have. At the end you have 25 players.”

“One year in 500 you can play 11 players through (an entire season). Tottenham I would say pretty much played with 12 or 13 players (last campaign). For all the other things you need these 24 players, Christmas period, things like that.”

“I wish Kevin from the bottom of my heart that he’ll be back as quick as possible. I’ve heard it could have been worse, that’s always good news and I hope we can see that in a few days at least.”

Klopp also was quick to stress that rivals shouldn’t underestimate Guardiola’s squad depth just because of the absence of one – albeit very talented – footballer: “For City having Ilkay Gundogan as an option, Bernardo Silva as an option, young Foden as an option.”

“You could see it in the Community Shield against Chelsea, it was so good and Silva and de Bruyne didn’t play. You think ‘wow, that’s really football’. They’re used to what they do and obviously they will be strong again.”