Maths may not exactly be his strong point, but Jurgen Klopp believes he has 500million reasons why he couldn’t improve Liverpool ’s defence in the summer.
The Reds boss admits that at times his side have been guilty of “bulls**t” mistakes which have cost them dearly so far this season.
But in response to the sniping critics who catch glimpses of foreign defenders and insist there surely were viable alternatives to Virgil van Dyke in the transfer window, Klopp insisted there simply weren’t any available who could improve his team.
Names like Davinson Sanchez, Kalidou Koulibaly and Benedikt Howedes were all cited as players equal to van Dijk, but asked if there were genuine alternatives who were overlooked in the pursuit of the Saints defender, he replied:
“No. We watched all of them 500million times, and to cool the people down what if the new player doesn’t hit the first ball and he makes exactly the same mistake?
“A mistake they all made in their life – but it is like, ‘he is a £65million signing, he will improve’. Why do you think the other one cannot improve? I don’t understand that.
“For me it’s really difficult always to come to your planet, visit you and say ‘yeah you’re right, there were five good options out there and we missed them because, I don’t know, we wanted to spend the money anywhere else’.
“It is not that we ignore it - I said if there would have been a solution out there we would have done it. I had to make a decision and the decision was our boys are not worse than them.
“It is concentration. It is not a quality thing. But if there’s no-one, no solution out there, and no real quality issue then you have to work on it and that is what we will do.”
Klopp knows that the received wisdom on his side means that every single mistake will now be placed firmly in the ‘can’t defend’ category, leaving him admitting: “It looks to me a little bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Yet as he prepares for the visit of Burnley, and a potentially frustrating afternoon of suffocating defensive blocks, the German coach passionately countered the argument that he is too trusting of gaffe-prone players.
“People say that? I believe in trust. I trust people until they give me an opportunity or a possibility not to trust them anymore. That’s how I understand life,” he explained.
“My job is really to make the best out of this season and it’s easy for me in a lot of moments to believe in this team – it’s easy.
“Oh yeah, sometimes they make bulls**t, and we are not happy. Sometimes [there are] goals I’m angry about, and it’s not the first one. Of course you wish we could have done differently, but that can happen. That’s really life.
“Really, with all this about (our defenders) go out there and ask other teams whether they’d like to pick them. You would be really surprised.
“Let’s say when I came here we started new and now we have this team. When I came in we were ninth and now, ‘ooofff.’ We are really on a good way.
“Sometimes we make mistakes because we are offensively that strong.”