Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has ruled out parting ways with midfielder Naby Keita this summer.
90min understands that Keita is concerned over his role in the Liverpool side, having seen just five minutes in the Community Shield before watching on from the sidelines in the Reds’ two Premier League games so far.
With less than 12 months remaining on his contract, Keita has been heavily linked with a departure from Anfield but, as 90min reported, the Reds have no plans to part ways with the Guinea international this summer.
That stance has now been confirmed by Klopp, who told a press conference: “Selling Naby now? And not replacing him? No, that is not possible! Of course not. But it is not the plan.
“We are done [in the transfer market], it’s not that we think a player can go and we don’t replace him. There’s no chance. No. Naby will not go but if he would – but he will not do! – then there must be a replacement of course, it’s clear. And yeah, sure, it would be very difficult to replace him.”
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Klopp also reiterated that Liverpool’s midfield has ‘everything it needs’ when everyone is healthy – a rare sight around Anfield as Thiago, Curtis Jones and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are all currently sidelined – and insisted that any new signing would have to be extensively scouted and approved by the club’s transfer committee.
“When they are all fit, 100% , but even then we always look to strengthen… but it must be the right player,” he said.
“And if the right player is not available then we tend to say ‘OK we deal with what we have before we sign a player who is not 100% the right player’. So this situation never changed. Now we have more injuries than we would have imagined, and now would be cool to have a new midfielder in, of course now.
“And then there would be another fact: we are not in charge of what we spend, we are not. That’s the situation, we get things told and then we deal with it. It was always the same, never different.”
