Jurgen Klopp Liverpool
Jurgen Klopp rejected suggestions Liverpool had made any mistake in the transfer market, and named Jamie Carragher for suggesting the Reds had done so.
Jurgen Klopp said “Yes, we went into the season with three centre-backs and Fabinho as cover. And some young kids as cover. That is usually quite a good number,. Sometimes, it is difficult to have four world-class centre-backs where it is usually on one side, pretty expensive. One of them doesn’t play for a long, long time and it is pretty difficult. It is not a position where you rotate a lot. If someone thinks we’ve made a mistake in the transfer market, and I think Jamie Carragher already has, or whatever…there are a few reasons why they don’t do this job and do that job [as analyst]. I do not always have the solutions always before the problem.”
Liverpool have been left short at centre-back with Virgil van Dijk facing months out with an ACL problem and Joel Matip missing the trip to Ajax with a knock. That means Joe Gomez is Liverpool’s sole fit senior centre-back with midfielder Fabinho expected to fill in alongside him at the heart of the Reds’ defence. Liverpool also have youngsters Rhys Williams and Nat Phillips as options, but decided against replacing Dejan Lovren when he left for Zenit in the summer.
