Jurgen Klopp insists there is no secret to Liverpool’s successful recruitment in recent years. But the Reds boss believes the nature of how the club is run means no stone is left unturned in making sure the right players are brought to the club. In a remarkably detailed breakdown of the transfer strategy, Klopp explained how the club have been able to recruit to such a high level in recent years where they have gone from top-four outsiders to Premier League, European and world champions.
Jurgen Klopp said: There is no key I don’t think, apart from having some smart people in the right positions, but I am pretty sure other teams have that as well. So first and foremost, I am pretty sure it will be a success with Luis, but we should not judge him after one game. We should not praise the recruitment [yet], but I know what you mean. So the boys we brought in there were no real bargains. It was not that Alisson was not expensive. OK, I think today everyone would say: ‘yes, that is the least price I would pay for him if I’d known how good he is’. That is similar to Virgil van Dijk , then we have brought Fabinho in, Naby Keita , Sadio Mane , Mo Salah …so many players. There is no secret here, but our situation at this club is that our transfers have to hit the ground [running] because we can’t make a £40m or £50m signing and say that if they are not playing then that is not important. That can always happen of course with injuries and stuff like this, but it should not happen very often because it’s not that we say in Germany that we ‘swim in money’.
Jurgen Klopp added: “It’s a wealthy club, there are no problems here but the policy is clear; we spend what we earn. If we earn more, we can spend more and if we earn less, we spend less. It is not that we cannot do anything [if we earn nothing] but for us it is very important that we have to do absolutely the right thing. We have to think once about it, twice, three times, four times and if we have to think about it for a fifth time it might be that the player goes to another club and we cannot change that. That is what we have done so far. The club have had some incredible free transfers with James Milner and Joel Matip. We brought in some real talents like Andy Robertson and we’ve had our own boys who were already here before I got here and it is just a mix of everything. I think that transfers are a very emotional business for the outside world and a very…what is the word in English…the fans think about it with the heart and we have to think about it with the head. So it just has to make sense, what do we need now? What do we need tomorrow? That’s just the transfer business and it is not so easy. For us, it is pretty easy to ignore the public pressure and it is always like this. It is always that if you don’t sign in these dates then you don’t work and we see it slightly differently. I don’t think that is different to any other teams, that is always the same but obviously with Michael Edwards and Julian Ward and their team, we have brilliant people here who make really good proposals. We, as coaches, make good proposals as well and so far we have found, more often than not, the right solution for this team. It’s about timing as well. I am 100 per cent sure that a year later Diogo Jota would have had offers from other top clubs, that is how it is. In the year we got him, it might not have been the case, I don’t know. It is similar to Mo, if he had played another season at Roma in the same manner, then there probably would have been other clubs in for him as well. So it is about timing, it is about what you need at that moment. We were lucky when we were looking for a winger at the first time that we found Sadio at Southampton. It was not that difficult to find him because he played and scored goals against us. So it was obvious, but for all the players it is the same; the most important thing for a signing and that a transfer works is that the team they join is in a good place. That helps massively that it is a settled team so the new signing doesn’t have to come in and change the world on his first day. That helps massively. If you have to, as a new player – with all the new things you face every day – if you have to be the one that makes the difference the next Saturday against whoever, it makes life really difficult. And that was never the case since I have been here. The team have always already been good before a new player arrived so he could settle in. Some took more time and we didn’t have to put any kind of pressure on any new arrival. I think the best example of that is maybe Fabinho. When he came here, it was really tricky to adapt to the way we play, the system we play with one No.6 instead of a double six. He had to adapt and we tried to help him but it was not that we could do it overnight. If you have time, I think all these boys…like a player who has the value of £50m or £60m or whatever, they all have quality. But how do you create a situation for them? You cannot create a situation for them, it has to be there and when they arrive they need to join a settled team and then they can help them to make the next step.”
