Klopp: I didn’t want Mkhitaryan

The Armenian’s impressive 25 goals in the 2012/13 season saw the former Dortmund boss pay top-dollar to lure the player to the Bundesliga.

Speaking to ESPN about more signings coming in, Klopp said: “If I had to guess I would say rather no, but I don’t know actually because it’s a long time until August 31 and I have no idea”.

Klopp ended the club’s pursuit and completed a £30million deal for Sadio Mane instead.

It had previously been suggested that Klopp could seek to be reunited with Mkhitaryan, having brought the Armenia global to Dortmund from Shakhtar Donetsk in 2013.

“I had that player”.

“If you bring one player in for £100m and he gets injured, then it all goes through the chimney”, stated Klopp.

And Klopp says he is confident that they will all prove to be good captures.

“I don’t know exactly how much money we could spend because nobody has told me, “No, you can’t do this”. There was absolutely no reason for me to jump in there.

“[There are some new drills] because we didn’t have time to work with the boys last season”.

“Certainly at the moment we should not look for excuses and say things like “I need another year” or things like that”. If you do that, you know their good, their bad and you wonder whether you will do it again.

“It’s not boring but you know everything about each other so how can you develop?” Where is the next push for development?’

“New players have to bring in their quality. It is about finding the players who can make the next step with us”. In a bid to play regular first team football, he moved back to Dortmund this summer.

He went on to insist we were now looking at a Jurgen Klopp team; for much of last season he was dealing with a mish mash of players from the Rodgers, Dalglish, Hodgson, and even Rafa eras.

“There are a lot of players who will only join a club when it is in the Champions League”.

“That is how everybody in football understands it. You always want to have the best, but building the group is necessary to be successful”.