Mohamed Salah: Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has no concerns over striker’s future | Soccer News

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp doesn’t think Mohamed Salah will look for an escape route in search of Champions League football.

Writing on social media after Manchester United’s win over Chelsea on Thursday relegated Liverpool to next season’s Europa League, the Egyptian striker said he was “devastated” and there was “absolutely no excuse not to finish in the top four of the Premier League.

Last summer, the 30-year-old signed a new contract, making him the highest-paid player in the club’s history, but even if the next term goes as planned and they regain their place in the League champions, he will be about to enter the final. 12 months of this agreement.

Asked if he was concerned about Salah’s immediate future after his rare public statement, Klopp replied: “No worries, no. I only heard what he said but I didn’t. I haven’t been able to read anything that can go in this direction.

“Obviously Mo loves being here and Mo was a part of that. He apologized for what ‘we’ did – not ‘what the other guys did, but I had to go with them’. It’s okay.

“If a player ever came to me and said ‘oh, we haven’t qualified for the Champions League, I have to go’, I would drive him to the other club myself.

“I’d take the key, (and say) ‘come in the car, where do you want to go, I’ll drive you’.

“It would be something that I could never understand. It’s, I would say, ‘oh, we haven’t qualified for the Champions League, I have to work in the Champions League so I’m going’.”

Klopp said if that was a mentality he accepted he would look to leave as well.

“I’m responsible for this mess, or whatever, so you can’t go in those times,” he added.

“Mo’s not, not at all, and no one else has told me. They ask if they can take a longer vacation or whatever – but no one asks me if after the holidays they have to come back.

“So it wasn’t in our conversation. I saw him now in the canteen and he was smiling. I don’t know why because I didn’t ask him, but he’s not in a bad mood. C ‘is all.

“We didn’t point fingers at each other. That’s fine. If you don’t qualify for the Champions League, the best possible place is fifth, so that’s what we did.

“If you had asked me 10 games ago if it was possible, I would have said no. That the boys did that, it’s really good but it’s not perfect.

“We didn’t end up fifth because of the last 10 games, we ended up there because of the lack of consistency before that. We didn’t deliver what everyone wanted or expected, but we’re still really united , that’s the good thing about it.”

Failure to qualify for the Champions League is set to cost Liverpool at least £50million next season, but there could be shorter-term implications as UEFA’s second-tier competition will be probably less appealing to major players.

The club have already pulled out of the race for prime target Jude Bellingham after the asking price for the Borussia Dortmund midfielder became prohibitive, and reports this week suggest Chelsea midfielder Mason’s preferred destination Mount is Manchester United.

Klopp is keen to get his business done early and hopes finishing fifth won’t put a spanner in the works of their planning.

“I don’t think so, but we’ll see. It’s obviously possible, it’s always possible things won’t go as fast as you want them to. It’s not just possible, it’s probably likely,” he said. he added before the last game on Sunday. the season at Southampton.

“The better the players you want, the less the other club wants to let him go and that’s exactly what we’re prepared for.

“But it’s a long window and a long pre-season and a long break in between, so we have time. If we get players tomorrow or in six or seven weeks, that won’t be a game-changer for me, to be honest.

“In an ideal world they all sign tomorrow and I can tell them when to be here and we can start giving them the plans for summer vacation, but that’s probably not going to happen.”