Klopp: I saw Liverpool struggles coming - that’s why I signed a new contract

Liverpool’s struggles this season have not come as a surprise to Jurgen Klopp, who signed a new deal in anticipation of a much-needed rebuild.
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Jurgen Klopp has revealed that he was motivated to sign a new Liverpool contract by the fact that he fully expected this season to be a difficult one.

Having won both the FA Cup and League Cup last term and come within a whisker of an unprecedented quadruple success, the Reds have endured a campaign to forget this time around.

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Already out of both domestic cup competitions and on the brink of a Champions League exit, Klopp's men are also underdogs in the battle for a top-four Premier League finish.

However, these struggles have not come as a surprise to the manager, who insists he is fully committed to the rebuild required to restore his team to its former glories.

Asked if his plans on that front had been changed by recent defeats, he replied: "Not at all. If we are only influenced by the things that happened recently... but we are not that dumb, it's not like, 'Today was not okay so now we have to change'.

"It was always clear that this team has a wonderful history and the way that this club is led by not splashing the money, our transfer have to always be on point.

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"So that makes it really tricky, we cannot make four transfers before we know who will leave the club and stuff like this.

"But I cannot say it often enough, I knew it would be tricky [this season] and that was one of the main reasons I signed a new contract, to make sure that people don't have to discuss on top of all that that [I] leave next year.

"And not because I'm that great, just because imagine the same situation with another coach. Everybody would have said, 'Bring Klopp back!'

"Last season was not a year for a big change, we played until the last moment. And if you want to change, this club we cannot bring in new players and realise then that nobody wants to leave, it does not work like that.

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"That's why it's not possible to start it early because we had final, after final, after final, we had the season until the last minute, then we had a short break, then we had a lot of injuries, then the World Cup.

"Of all the problems we knew we would had, that came on top, and now we are in it. I know it's too long, and it's for me too long, because I have to face you in the press conference and I don't like to talk about it all the time. But I have to think it all the time. That's the situation, I cannot change it that people aren't happy.

"We try to fight through and make the best of this season, that's the idea, and stay in that period as good a person as you can be. The better you behave in a moment like this, the better the times will be after it, and the more useful the bad times are.

"Because they have to be useful, otherwise they are completely useless. Imagine that, in all our lives that we wouldn't have learned from our failures or the things that didn't go well, we wouldn't be the same people. So we have to learn from it as well and we will.

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"But now we are in this heated atmosphere where we lose a game, everybody out, we win a game, give him a new contract! I'm too old for that.

"We have to make our own plans and that's what we do, but based on the way this club is led. It's obviously different to other clubs but it worked out so far and we have to see if it will work still or if we have to adapt.

"But that's something for us in the offices when we are not on the training pitch and my conversations with the owners and all these kinds of things. That's it, nothing else."