Jurgen Klopp seems a happy man after Liverpool were able to hold on to Philippe Coutinho despite a lot of interest from Barcelona. The Brazilian had put in a transfer request and wanted to join the Catalan side but we held firm and ensured we kept our word of not selling him.
Coutinho, for his part, hasn’t played a single game for us this season but did play for the national side during the international break. The Brazilian is now back with the side and as we prepare for a tough clash against Manchester City at the Etihad, Klopp provided an update on our star midfielder.
Speaking ahead of the away clash against Manchester City, the former Borussia Dortmund manager said (as quoted by Liverpool Echo):
“Relationship with Coutinho is the same.
“It was not the most easy time, but that’s the transfer window. I really think we handled it really well. There’s no secret what happened. All the things in the papers were 100% right.
“Phil came in yesterday, he accepted 100% the situation. I didn’t even have to say anything about it. Now we have a wonderful player who wants to play for the club. He loves football and he still loves this club. There is no problem.”
The German further added that the £150,000-a-week earner is still the same player for now, although he only had one conversation with him.
“Is he the same Philippe? How can I say after one talk with him? He seems it. We all know about the situation. I said to the boys in the dressing room ‘Welcome two new players… Ox [Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain] and Phil!'”
Klopp did state that Coutinho would not be featuring against Manchester City, though the Brazilian could have played for a quarter of an hour.
“There will never be time to train and we had this conversation, before he went to Brazil he couldn’t train for around about 3 weeks. So that means now we have to now prepare him for the rest of the season, which is difficult with our fixtures and our schedule.
“So I decided to leave him out for City. We can use this four/five days for real and proper training. We got the numbers from the Brazilian FA around the intensity of training which was all okay. But he played twice for 15/20 minutes. He could have played 15/20 minutes for us again in the City game, maybe longer, but I think it makes sense. By the way he agreed completely and it was a good conversation.”
The German might be doing the right thing by bedding Coutinho in slowly rather than throwing him at the deep end against the Citizens. The relationship might be a slightly fractured one now, between Coutinho and the club but he has no option but to play now and no fracture is not healable, right?
This being a World Cup year, Coutinho will have to put in top performances to stake a claim in the Brazilian squad and with a long season ahead, we just might get to see some more magic from our No.10.
