WE NEED TO SPEND SPEND SPEND
Klopp promises spree will make Liverpool title challengers again
JURGEN KLOPP says Liverpool will splash the cash this summer in an effort to build a squad capable of challenging for the Premier League title. The Reds manager admitted his side’s form this year has exposed a lack of depth in personnel but insisted the club are ready to spend big in the summer to make up lost ground on the rest of the top six. “We still have to make the right transfers but we will have to make transfers,” he said. “If we perform at the highest level nobody asks for new players but if you don’t everybody asks for them. “That is the situation we are in and we are working on it already. We will spend money in the summer.” Klopp, whose side face Arsenal this evening, accepted that the failure to sign a couple of players in the January transfer window when Sadio Mane was away at the African Nations Cup was not ideal. “One or two players in January, when we had problems with injury and the Africa Cup, would have been cool,” he said.
“Could we have had more? Yes, but the transfer window in the
winter didn’t give us any. We will be prepared for the summer for sure and we all have the same plan: sporting director, scouting department, owners, myself. We want to make this club as big and as successful as possible.”
Liverpool made a profit on the ins and outs last summer but Klopp predicted that another summer of balanced housekeeping was unlikely.
“It was not a target last season, we didn’t say, ‘let’s look if we can do it’, it just happened. We tried to create a group which we thought would be enough and that’s what happened,” he said.
“But will it be a similar transfer window as last summer when we broke even? I don’t think it is possible. Now there will be a few other faces.”
Klopp conceded that Liverpool’s form over the season has not been good enough to mount a proper title challenge but he still believes there is much to play for this season.
“You cannot finish the season when you want,” he said. “You have to play until the end. If we finish on December 31 – all good! Beating Manchester City, going into 2017 – all good.
“Two months later everything is different. The truth is that it’s not one or the other. We are somewhere in between. The basis of this team is really good.”