Jurgen Klopp insists the challenge of rebuilding Liverpool ’s squad was his motivation for signing a contract extension at the club last year as he criticised the spending at Chelsea.
Last April, Klopp penned a two-year extension to his previous Reds deal which would see him and his backroom staff stay on at Anfield until at least the summer of 2026. Klopp recently admitted things need to change at the Reds and has spoken of the need to revamp the squad.
The Reds are ninth in the Premier League and a whopping 10 points off a top-four place (albeit with a game in hand), with qualification for next season’s Champions League increasingly improbable. Their EFL Cup defence ended last month and face a testing trip to Brighton in the FA Cup, just weeks after their humbling three-goal defeat on the South Coast.
Klopp is eyeing a summer rebuild at Anfield after insisting he is not "too loyal" to his players and claims that his awareness that big changes were required in the first-team squad motivated him to extend his stay to build a new Liverpool team.
"I’m not saying it’s the biggest challenge, but it’s a challenge, and it was one of the main reasons why I signed a new contract because I knew it’s necessary,” Klopp explained on the BT Sport podcast Mike Calvin’s Football People .
“It will not go overnight and imagine the situation now with another coach in the chair. I would be somewhere on holiday, and everybody would shout my name ‘with him it would not have happened!’ I’m obviously not a miracle worker.
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“That’s why it’s good how it is, because all the problems you have in a transition time period, we have an awful lot of injuries, and that makes life really complicated. I have no problem with that because I see obviously… I know the majority of the outside world is just interested in the short term but we have to be long-term focused as well, and that’s what we are.”
The Reds boss then went on to aim an apparent dig at Chelsea amid the Blues heavy spending under new owner Todd Boehly. The Blues have spent upwards of £400million on transfers this season with several more expected in the remainder of the January transfer window.
Klopp said:"There are obviously plenty of different ways you can do it, but it’s all based on the situation you are in, especially with the things happening around, Chelsea with the new ownership obviously, nobody knows exactly how they do it, how they can spend this much money. Other teams, nobody likes me talking about that... but transition needs time if you don’t have endless money, otherwise you can change overnight pretty much, bringing in 10 players.
"Last week I got a question if I am too loyal, I’m not too loyal but questioning loyalty in general is a sign of our time, the time we are living in as well, which I really don’t like too much. I never saw anything bad in loyalty, to be honest, to your friends, to your family, to your company, in an ideal world you are loyal, and it’s not a one-way word. That’s an ideal world when both sides feel the same and big things can grow."
