Klopp Relaxed About Interest in Players

Ahead of tomorrow’s game against Sevilla, Jürgen Klopp spoke about interest in his star players. Philippe Coutinho has been the central figure in tiresome transfer rumour after tiresome transfer rumour even after the end of the summer transfer window. Expect more Mohamed Salah transfer rumours with more meat to them than a swap deal for Antoine Griezmann, but that’s what happens when players do well.

For Klopp, however, this is not something to worry about.

"No! I'm not worried about it," Klopp said. "The only opportunity for us to be successful is to have good players in the team. If you have good players it's our job to make sure these players want to stay at Liverpool and don't want to go somewhere else.

"If players still want to go somewhere else it can have different reasons but it's not my problem in this moment. It's a long season to go and we have this team together now and we want to be as as successful as possible which is difficult enough to be honest.

"I'm happy to have these players together and hopefully they can be successful tomorrow."

Again, Liverpool’s number ten was the focus once more. After a fine performance against Southampton on Saturday, the Brazilian rose to third (31 assists) in Liverpool’s assist ranking in the Premier League era behind Steve McManaman (58) and Steven Gerrard (92). He’s also the top ranked Brazilian for assists and has scored more league goals from outside the area than any other player since arriving in January 2013.

Coutinho is special, but Klopp is relaxed about the aftermath of any feats by his most talented player.

"It's all good," Klopp said, omitting "Diego to the Bay" just because he can. "You in Spain are used to a lot of media and different things, Barcelona, Real Madrid, all that stuff. But actually in the business nobody is interested - it's only for the people.

"We are completely cool, Phil is 100% at Liverpool. That's possible after all the talks in the summer, that's really possible. That's not just him but a lot of other players.

"When the market is open there are a few discussions and when the market is closed we are all professionals and do the job again. That's what we did in this case and that's what we will do in all the other cases."