Jurgen Klopp has admitted his relief that his Liverpool side hasn’t been broken up during his time at Anfield.
The German has led the Reds to Premier League, Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup glory since being appointed manager in October 2015, and rates his current squad as one of the very best he has taken charge of.
He enjoyed similar success with former club Borussia Dortmund, winning two Bundesliga titles and reaching a Champions League final before seeing a number of his leading talents lured away by the likes of Bayern Munich.
And having resisted a similar scenario with Liverpool, Klopp admits the Reds would have struggled to challenge for silverware and compete with Man City at the top of the Premier League table if he hadn’t been able to keep his squad together.
“It would be a shame if after seven years they didn’t get what I tell them,” he told reporters at his Norwich City pre-match press conference. “Or a miracle that I would survive as a manager if they didn’t do that.
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“We grew together as a group and as a team and I rank them that high. I had outstanding squads in my life, thank God.
“The Dortmund squad of 10/11 and 11/12 was insane. The only problem was that we only had it for two years and then the football world thought the Dortmund journey was long enough so now let’s pick a few.
“That doesn’t happen here so we can keep them and means we can build on the things we did together. That makes a difference.
“We talk about sports, the Winter Olympics are happening at the moment. Thank God in the Olympics at least we talk about one, two and three. That’s a really great achievement.
“But unfortunately in football, it’s only one. Great achievement when you win it. You get a medal for second place in a final but it’s not exactly the same as a silver medal at the Olympic Games.”
He continued: “In the league, it’s the same. We fight with the best team for a long time in City, and a lot of really, really good teams who are close, for success.
“We need that, we need the quality that we have. If we didn’t have the quality, we wouldn’t be near.
“But we came through in the last few years with the same squad, pretty much. Not exactly but a similar squad.
“Seven, eight, nine, ten were injured and we had to get through it somehow. We were sitting here and we didn’t speak once about the squad. We only spoke then about the players available because players were unavailable.
“Now we have more available but the rules didn’t change. We can only line up 11. That’s what we do and because of the character the boys show, I rate them really highly.”
