Klopp confirms Kelleher talks about summer departure but ‘nonsense’ offers kept ‘keeper at Anfield
With news of Alisson Becker’s long-term injury being confirmed, Jurgen Klopp has delivered a Caoimhin Kelleher update that we will all love to hear.
As reported by Paul Joyce for The Times, the 56-year-old said: “It is completely normal that you have these discussions with players who are ready.
“An outfield player in a situation like Caoimhin would never come and talk about these sorts of perspectives because they have ten other positions. With a goalkeeper it is slightly different, but it never reached a point whereby it was, ‘You have to stay, shut up’. It was just the normal discussion about his future.
“The most important thing was we had to help him on the next step in his development by playing more games. I saw it the same way as what the player would say. I think now he would be pretty happy with the decision he made in the summer.
“For me there was no chance of him leaving, so I was not interested in who was asking. It would have had to be a proper price to give us a chance of doing something in a difficult market.
“It is not like other goalkeepers moving from A to B for £15 million or £20 million. That is totally unrealistic and nonsense.”
READ MORE: (Video) Luis Diaz’s parents and wife star in kidnap-mocking TikTok video
It seems then that there was a chance the Irishman could have left the club last summer and the same report states that an offer of £20 million from Nottingham Forest was swiftly rejected.
We don’t want to lose a player with the level of talent that the 25-year-old has but he deserves to play football every week and if the right offer from the right club came in, then it’s clear our manager wouldn’t have stood in his way.
Although it benefits us to have a top quality stopper as our back-up, the German could never build such strong relationships with his younger players if he didn’t make decisions that were best for them in the long-term.
Our No.62 knows that he is valued at Anfield and until someone values as highly as we do, he can stay and fight for a place in the starting line-up.
Thankfully, nobody met the valuation of the Brazilian’s understudy and now we have reaped the rewards of having him on the bench for most of the campaign thus far.
Let’s hope the academy graduate continues to thrive in the coming weeks and months and plays a key role in helping us hold our position on top of the Premier League.
EOTK Insider: A tribute to Alex South; a remarkable man with a special Kop moment
The post Klopp confirms Kelleher talks about summer departure but ‘nonsense’ offers kept ‘keeper at Anfield appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.