Klopp Talk: “This Transfer Window Will Not Be Ours”

Liverpool will end January top of the Premier League table—but they won’t be winning the January transfer window.

With just one day left to go in the January transfer window, most Liverpool fans have long accepted that about the most exciting thing that’s likely to happen is Lazar Markovic agreeing to leave the club six months before his contract runs down.

A departure for Markovic, a loan for Ben Woodburn. That’s about as exciting as deadline day will get. And for anyone thinking it should be otherwise, Jürgen Klopp wants to remind them that, as he sees it, you don’t buy a new player for one or two games.

“People tell you here’s a player, there’s a player, go buy them,” Klopp told the BBC. “But you cannot because after three weeks you have another problem because the other boys come back. For a few of them, maybe they’re just out for Leicester.”

At the start of every season, Klopp commits to his players for the coming year and to working with them towards a common goal, and bringing in a new signing mid-season just to play one or two games isn’t the kind of move he’s inclined to make.

He’s also not a fan of the idea of replacing a player who earned their spot mid-season, and that’s a hard point to argue against—especially with the club sitting top of the table. The players now out earned their places. And got Liverpool to where they currently are.

Players like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez earned key roles, and a mid-season signing that reshuffles the depth chart and potentially limits their involvement when they do return wouldn’t be fair to them. Which means that’s not going to happen.

“Only in football,” Klopp added. “In all other parts of life, if you replace everybody who is ill or had a broken leg and would be out for four weeks the world would be an ugly place. In football it’s like that because it’s only a game—but we take it very serious.

“‘It’s only a game come on buy a new one bring him in!’ Then afterwards if we buy a fullback we then ask Trent and Joe, so now do you want to play? That makes no sense, so we have to just go through this and this transfer window will not be ours.”

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com