With Chelsea having blitzed the transfer market this summer, it’s seemingly left many of their opponents behind in terms of beefing up their squads this season.
However, Jurgen Klopp has questioned the way in which the Blues have done their business and that Liverpool don’t necessarily have to follow such a model.
“We live in a world at the moment with a lot of uncertainty,” he said on Radio Five Live and cited by the Daily Express.
“For some clubs it seems to be less important how uncertain the future is. Owned by countries, owned by oligarchs, that’s the truth.
“We’re a different kind of club. We got to the Champions League final two years ago, we won it last year and became Premier League champions.
“[…] We cannot change it overnight and say, ‘so now we want to behave like Chelsea, now we want to behave like them.’
“That can be an advantage of course, but that means they have to fit together pretty quick as well.
“It’s not all about bringing in quality, you cannot bring in the 11 best players in the world and just hope a week later they will play the best football they ever will play.
“It’s about working together on the training ground, that will probably be an advantage for us, we work quite a while with each other.
“I know people don’t want to hear that but we did it for our own club reasons. We always want to improve the squad but there are different ways.”
Given the Reds’ recent success, Klopp surely has a point.
That’s not to say that if there’s a chance to improve certain positions that the German wouldn’t take it, but wholesale changes aren’t necessary for a team that have taken on all-comers for all intents and purposes over the last couple of seasons.
Should Chelsea hit the ground running and Liverpool stutter as they did at the back end of last season, that may change the narrative as far as supporters are concerned, but Klopp has built up enough respect to not have his decisions challenged at this point.