Jurgen Klopp insists there will be no mega-money transfers for Liverpool this summer and doubts whether the likes of Kylian Mbappe, Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho will be on the move.
Clubs across Europe are still counting the cost of the coronavirus pandemic and having to play behind closed doors, meaning there is a lot less money available than there has been previously.
Liverpool have regularly been linked with the big-name trio but Klopp has always tried to play down the likelihood of the club breaking the bank to bring any of them to Anfield.
Even Manchester City’s regaining of the Premier League title from the Reds will not prompt a change in policy, with the prospect of failing to qualify for the Champions League reducing the money available to Klopp.
Asked what might be possible transfer-wise, the German, who believes much of the business will be done late in the window with clubs assessing their finances and Euro 2020 also to take place, said: “Not a lot.
“It depends on what happens if someone wants to leave, if we sell. We can never really plan early.
“Not playing Champions League doesn’t help obviously, but it’s not our biggest problem. The market will be really strange.
“I hear about really big money moves… is Kylian Mbappe going? Haaland? Sancho? I don’t see that happening a lot this summer because the football world is still not in the same place it was before.
“The situation is better than I would have thought a year ago but the financial situation is a year where everyone suffers.
“We will see how the market will develop but for sure it won’t be an early market.
“It’s not good if you don’t go to the Champions League, but there is still a chance and while there is a chance we should not speak about it as no chance.”
Instead Klopp insists a fully-fit squad will be able to challenge City and the emerging threat of Chelsea, both of whom are better placed to spend money, and Thursday’s opponents Manchester United.
He believes having all three senior centre-backs – Virgil Van Dijk, Joe Gomez and Joel Matip – and captain Jordan Henderson ready for pre-season after long-term injuries will be like having new signings.
Feeling strong, feeling good! 😁 pic.twitter.com/ZyjKqeJyaV
— Virgil van Dijk (@VirgilvDijk) May 12, 2021
“You don’t think City and Chelsea always have advantages? And we still won the league and the Champions League, so it is our situation,” he added.
“I never look at other clubs and think ‘They can do this, so we can’t do that’.
“I am not interested in being the coach of the best team in the world, I am interested in being the coach of the team who can beat the best team in the world.
“If two or three of them play in our league then we will try to beat them and if we can beat some others as well we will have enough points to win something.
“We just have to use our situation better than we did this year. Yes, we had bad luck, definitely, but this was not a season where we could not have become a champion. No chance.
“But could we have had five, six, seven more points, with exactly the same situation we have been in the whole time? Yes.
“Getting the players back makes us better, definitely. These are our first transfers. We don’t know exactly when it will happen but it will happen.”
