Jürgen Klopp 'won't cry' if Liverpool fail to sign centre-back in January
Jürgen Klopp has declared he will not cry like a five-year-old if Liverpool fail to sign the centre-back he would ideally want in the last 10 days of the transfer window.
Klopp, who has paired the midfielders Fabinho and Jordan Henderson in the middle of his defence recently, has conceded he would prefer to get reinforcements to cover for the injured Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez and in the frequent absences of Joël Matip.
But the financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic have limited Liverpool’s spending power and Klopp is adamant he will neither throw a childish tantrum nor use it as an excuse for their recent slide.
“I am not a five-year-old kid any more and if I don’t get what I want I start crying,” he said. “Most of the time in my life I didn’t get what I want, to be honest, so we are all pretty much used to that. I am responsible for a big part of this football club but there are people who are responsible for the whole thing and I cannot make their decision. I know they are with us and I know they want to support us and they do.
“What we have to do is improve the football in the decisive areas with this squad. That’s my job, and not sitting here and being disappointed or frustrated with some decisions. I am not. Of course, we know what we would do in an ideal world but the world is not ideal and not only for us. So we have to deal with the situation.”
Liverpool are on their longest Premier League drought in 21 years after failing to find the net in 438 minutes, but Klopp refused to attribute the lack of goals to the makeshift look of his side as he said that their troubled January has not altered their plans for the remainder of the window. He still has not replaced Dejan Lovren, who joined Zenit St Petersburg in July.
“Now we talk about a centre-half. Yes, it would help: 100%. Would we score more goals with a centre half? I am not sure. Would it give us a little bit more stability in specific moments? Yes, probably. But we don’t go and say: ‘If we don’t get this or that, then we cannot perform.’ It would sound like an excuse, and the last thing we are looking for is that.”
He denied complacency had been a factor in Liverpool’s decline: “It is not that in the moment we win the league and I put my feet on the desk and think that’s it and smoke a cigar and think: ‘Well done, from now on everything will work without any doing of mine.’”
keep the ball. There will be teams who sit back, and it’s up to us to break them down. That’s the type of player I am.”
And yet as things turned out, leaving West Ham would turn out to be the easy part. At a loose end for the first time in his career, Wilshere endured some of his lowest moments as he began to contemplate a life without football. Or worse, football without him.
“It was tough,” he said. “If I’m honest, I didn’t think it would take as long as it did [to find a new club]. Sometimes your mind can play games with you. My whole life, I was so used to just going into training and taking it for granted. But time away made me realise how much I miss being around the lads.
“If I’d achieved everything I wanted in the game, I’d probably have called it a day when I left West Ham. I’ve been lucky enough to earn good money throughout my career, so I didn’t need to come and play football. But being out of the game for three months at home made me realise I want to play this game for as long as possible.”
And so, despite offers from other Championship clubs and even Asia, Wilshere decided to return to the club where he enjoyed a happy loan spell in 2016-17, helping them to their only tophalf Premier League finish.
After training with Bournemouth since Christmas, Wilshere made his debut as a substitute against Derby on Tuesday night. The next step will be getting to full match fitness and establishing himself in Jason Tindall’s promotion-chasing midfield. “I wouldn’t say I’m a No 10 any more,” he says. “That role has changed. I’m either a No 6 or a No 8.”
And whatever Wilshere’s next challenge brings, for now he seems fit and content. Which, when you have experienced some of the setbacks he has over the last few years, is probably as much as you can ask for right now. “Once I heard Bournemouth were interested, I couldn’t stop smiling,” he says. “I didn’t get that feeling from any other club. I feel happy again. There’s a smile back on my face. My wife and kids were really emotional. Either that, or they were delighted to get me out of the house.”