Coutinho motives questioned as Klopp talks up Liverpool ‘project’

Jurgen Klopp has tried to talk Philippe Coutinho out of a move to Barcelona by insisting no player should agitate for a move away from Liverpool.

The La Liga giants have so far had two bids rejected – the second of which was for £90million – and there are rumours abound that they are planning a third bid of around £100million in a bid to convince Liverpool to sell.

But with Klopp very publicly admitting they have no desire to sell their talisman, a deal is by no means a guarantee – especially after Barcelona admitted that a deal for the Brazilian could be tough to conclude this transfer window.

And now Klopp has further tried to convince Coutinho to stay at Anfield by talking up his Liverpool project.

“Can you imagine for a minute I am not a little bit interested about the problems or not of Barcelona?” Klopp said.

“I will never talk about something I spoke about with a player, but you can imagine, in general, I think for each player Liverpool is a very good club, a very good team in the moment.

“We have a good age of the group. We have very young boys, experience—it’s a good mix and we are on our way.

“I think we got rid of the expectations of 20 years ago and created our own expectations for all the people. They expect a lot from us because of what we did last season.

“I am fine with the situation and I am very positive about the project of Liverpool.

“I don’t see a lot of reasons for each player to leave the club at the moment and that’s just in general.”

Discussing their prospects of signing Coutinho, Barcelona sporting director Robert Fernandez admitted: “It’s a very difficult situation.

“Not just Barca but any team looking for top quality players are getting involved in a very difficult situation in this market

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“Why? Because the market is where clubs like us want to sign top quality players. There’s no buy-out clauses so that makes things trickier.

“Yes, we are negotiating with clubs to make several signings, but in all awareness of the difficulty. We need to work our way into a favourable situation and hopefully close these deals as quickly as possible.

“[Ousmane] Dembele and Coutinho are two important players that we like a lot and have done for a long time. They have the conditions, the right age and could adapt to our football. They would be good to have here. That’s the reality.

“With respect to Liverpool and Dortmund, when there are negotiations you need time, you need to work things into a favourable situation for players and ourselves.