'I never, ever could have asked for that amount of money!' - Ex-Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp addresses Reds' mindboggling £450m summer spending spree after previous Man City complaints

Klopp was able to make Liverpool competitive across his nine-year tenure, with Premier League and Champions League crowns being captured. His coaching CV would have been even more glittering were it not for the presence of Pep Guardiola and City - with the Sky Blues investing heavily in a squad that enjoyed domestic domination during Klopp’s time in England.

Liverpool have now shown that they are prepared to compete in the transfer market, with huge sums of cash being parted with when securing the signatures of Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak, Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Hugo Ekitike, Giovanni Leoni and Giorgi Mamardashvili.

Klopp has told The Diary of a CEO podcast: “I had no clue that this is possible. Nobody ever told me that it’s possible that we can spend like that. My last year at Liverpool, we obviously (had) the adidas deal, the new stadium, all these kind of things - they earn more money. But never, ever I could have asked for that amount of money, but that’s not a problem. In that time it was not there, no problem at all.”

Back in 2022, as City prepared to march their way towards a historic treble, Klopp said when asked if Liverpool could compete with Guardiola’s expensively-assembled squad: “Oh, you won’t like the answer. You will not like the answer, and you all have the answer already. Nobody can compete with City in that.

“You have the best team in the world and you put in the best striker on the market [Erling Haaland]. No matter what it costs, you just do it. I know City will not like it, nobody will like it, you’ve asked the question but you know the answer. What does Liverpool do? We cannot act like them. It is not possible. Not possible. It is just clear and again you know the answer.

“There are three clubs in world football who can do what they want financially. It’s legal and everything, fine, but they can do what they want. They will say: ‘Yeah but we have...’ but it’s exactly the fact. We have to look at it [and say]: ‘We need that and we need that and we have to look here and make it younger, and here a prospect and here a talent’ and that is what you have to do. And you compete with them.”

Klopp has no complaints at seeing purse strings pulled a little tighter during his tenure, with that approach making his trophy triumphs even more fulfilling. He went on to say: “I love the fact that we were as successful as we were and built new stands and built a training ground, because we talk now about a transfer window in the way you want to talk about it, spend a lot of money, but there’s no discussion about the stands and no discussion about the training ground. They are second to none. The training ground and the stands are wonderful. In the same place where Anfield is, they could build pretty much a new stadium without leaving the old one, so that’s a fantastic story. And that will stay forever.”

Liverpool are yet to enjoy the return they are after from big-money additions to Arne Slot’s ranks, but Klopp is convinced that proven performers will come good. He added: “Isak is an incredible striker. Florian Wirtz, you will eat your words if you use the wrong words. He is an incredible talent. Ekitike is an incredible player. It’s a really, really, really good squad.

“If the young centre-half (Giovanni Leoni) doesn’t get injured, it’s a perfect squad. Now he’s injured, that doesn’t help. But besides the centre-half position, it’s a perfect squad. Two super left-backs, a really super-right back. That’s how you set a team up.

“Now you have to deal with the situation. They’ll all think they have to start the game but that’s a normal job. You’ll have this discussion of who will start in a week or two, and then in the third week one is injured and you’re happy that the other can start. That’s the world a football manager is living in. We don’t have to worry about Liverpool. They will be fine.”

The Reds are enduring an uncharacteristic wobble at present. Having burst out of the blocks in 2025-26 with seven straight victories across all competitions - with the history books being rewritten by a flurry of late goals - Slot’s side have suffered defeat in each of their last four fixtures. A dramatic loss was endured at the hands of Manchester United last time out, with Liverpool set to be back in action on Wednesday when facing Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League.