Liverpool FC never really made a “splash signing” this summer transfer window.
The closest they came to making a purchase that could be considered a big brand name was Sadio Mane. Obviously, this led to some criticism of Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp.
It comes off the heels of two straight summer transfer windows in which the Reds spent a lot of money, on multiple forwards, when they were led by Brendan Rodgers.
Of course, some of those transactions would come to define and ultimately doom Rodgers, because most of his acquisitions of attacking players didn’t pan out. Rodgers had a huge transfer kitty to work with, two summers in a row, after the sale of a big name forward (Luis Suarez and then Raheem Sterling) in both the 2014 and 2015 transfer windows.
Klopp didn’t have that situation work to his advantage in 2016, but that’s not the reason the German didn’t throw the money around at the position.
He simply didn’t see anything out in the open market that seemed better than what he already had on the roster. That’s message Klopp articulated to the media ahead of the Reds’ very impressive 2-1 win at Chelsea.
“We have the only attacking options that I want,” Klopp said.
“When I thought about what I had to do in the transfer window, I always heard, ‘We have to sign this striker or this kind of striker.’
“But it’s really difficult out there to find better strikers who are available. It’s not possible to find available strikers who are better than ours. But it’s not about having the best, it’s about doing the best.
“When we have won the last game everybody agrees with me and if we haven’t won the last game everybody thinks: ‘What is he talking about?’ That’s part of the deal and I have no problem with it. But I don’t change my mind every week.”
“The last game was good and the game before was good too, Tottenham are a difficult team to play against. Stoke saw that last weekend. Everybody will see it in the season. We did really well there.”
Scoring was definitely not an issue last weekend, when the Reds put four goals up on the defending champs Leicester City. Coincidentally, it was the first game of the Jurgen Klopp tenure in which the goal nets colors had been changed.
Klopp changed the color of the net from red to white, and LFC responded by scoring four goals. Liverpool had a really tough schedule to open the season, as their first four opponents were three of the four Premier League representatives in Champions League and Chelsea.
Amazingly, they took ten points from their match-ups against the three biggest London teams and the defending champions, Leicester City. It seems like Jurgen Klopp is really building something at Anfield now. Or as Sir Alex Ferguson said, he’s a perfect fit for the club.
After the match, Klopp said his team “played football like hell.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.