So here is what Klopp is saying about our transfer policy and the lack of business so far this summer about which some are very unhappy. He addresses so many of the common posts on here about our lack of activity this summer. You are free to disagree with him of course, but he makes it clear what he is doing:
“It's not easy,” says Klopp. “I said last year that to improve the team is not easy with reasonable money. With crazy money, you always can do it – okay, you pay whatever you want, then it's possible.
“We are not a club like that. We cannot do that. We are really wealthy but we cannot do what some other teams are doing. That's how it is.
“But we don't have to. We have to find solutions during the season. Yes, you find sometimes the solution in the transfer market and we have done that. I don't have to name the players, everybody knows.
“But otherwise you have to find the solutions on the training ground and that's what we do now.”
In the same ECHO article he elaborates on this last part of training players we already have up to the required level:
“We are still looking, but it will not be the (biggest) transfer window of LFC,” says Klopp. “It just will be a transfer window.
“We will see what we do, and if we haven't done anything by the end it will be for different reasons.
"It's about using this team. In the transfer window, you have to build a team that you think you want to go into the season with. But I have that team already.
“If we can bring somebody else in that makes it even better, we will see. But if not, this team is already there. And again we will have to find solutions at different moments.”
Klopp elaborates on that point. “We started last season with five centre-backs, Nat Phillips included," he adds. "Then there was one matchday against Brighton when there was Virgil van Dijk left. Fabinho next to him.
“Had one of them gone out, then I wouldn't have known who could do it. Who could play centre-back?
“You cannot be prepared for everything. You need a bit of luck, and we had a little bit of it in the final part of last season. We came through, won something, and now let's try again.”
Here is the best bit for me, in understanding Klopp's approach to whether or not to execute a transfer.
“Transfer strategy has to be long term,” he says. “It has to be long term. “Short term covers the problem, but doesn't solve it. If someone gets an injury, and you buy someone to fill the position and three weeks later the injured player is back, then you have double quality in the same position. Having too much quality doesn't help with the development of players. It's good for everybody on the outside, because they can say 'well if he can't play, then he can play or he could play.
“If you're working together all week and then three of the players (of the same quality in the same position) can't play, they won't get any better. It's not just about them staying confident in that kind of situation.
“You have to create a situation where you NEED the player, you need the boys. That's what we try. We have 100% always long-term plans. That's what is really good about this football club.”
So what I'm seeing is a holistic approach to managing players and the team. He genuinely cares about each player. He is driven to win, but he doesn't see the players as pieces of meat. He takes his responsibility to develop and build very seriously and I think by now he has shown he knows how to do that. How many managers of big clubs around the world, or even mid-sized clubs in England where there is so much TV money, don't really show much grasp of team and player development beyond, "how much money do I get to spend?" (and in their cases, they typically aren't even getting that great of a player, just kind of the latest fad driven by agents and their friends in the media)? How often do we see players linked with Liverpool over during transfer windows and they end up being signed by fairly average clubs who are never competing for the top trophies like we are?
I get the adrenaline rush when we sign someone, but it's nothing like the thrill of watching the team play and succeed. I know Man City are like a game of Football Manager with Editor where you can buy everyone and try to control every result (and yet players STILL have to load their save from prior to the time they lost a match unexpectedly). But our club is a more realistic situation than that, and the manager is the perfect person to make it work for us.
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