Jurgen Klopp believes at least three Liverpool stars can expect more football next season. This campaign has made it tough to hand out games, he says.
The injury crisis has handed out opportunities to various players this season. Some of which never would have had them.
We’ve seen Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams both gets plenty of first-team starts. No one saw that coming at the beginning of the campaign. Curtis Jones, too, has played a far bigger role than he was supposed to in his first senior season.
Even Caoimhin Kelleher got chances in goal after Alisson Becker had a spell out. Then there’s Ozan Kabak – a player who would never have even been at the club without the injuries forcing transfer business.
But not all players benefitted in that way. The injury crisis also limited certain stars and Jurgen Klopp says he expects them to have more games next season.
Jurgen Klopp on fringe stars
“These situations are not easy for the boys, not only [Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain] but for Naby [Keita] it is not easy, for [Xherdan Shaqiri] not easy and for some other players not easy,” Klopp said, per Liverpoolfc.com.
“I know that, but as I said, during the season a lot of things happened and the one thing we tried to get – and when we got it to keep it – was balance and rhythm, stability and that means you don’t change in these kinds of positions too often between the games.
“That’s it pretty much. With always having a different defence, we need a few things in midfield to be different to other times when we were much more settled and much more stable.
“That’s the reason why some players don’t have enough minutes. In their understanding for sure and even in my understanding, that’s completely clear but that will hopefully change next year completely because when you have more stability in the last line then you can be more flexible formation-wise further up the pitch.”
What RTK has to say
It’s an interesting take and one that does make sense. Klopp has wanted to keep consistency where he can, given the injuries robbed Liverpool of so much of it.
So it’s notable that the three players he mentioned are all midfielders. All three have had injury issues themselves, too.
Those injuries, mainly over the first-half of the season, meant none of the trio established themselves early on. Thus they’ve never really had the opportunity to as Klopp kept with his regular options.
Fortunately for them, that should change next season – if they’re still here.
Comments like this will encourage these players to stay in hope that things get better next season. But their spell on the fringes could also push them – and Liverpool – to head in a different direction next season.
What we do know, though, is that whoever the squad players are next season, we’ll be seeing a lot more of them.
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