Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager, has stressed that any move to replace Philippe Coutinho this month will have to be the “right” decision and no player will be brought in simply because the playmaker has left.

Coutinho completed his £142m move to Barcelona earlier this week, bringing months of speculation to an end and leaving Klopp’s side without their most creative and influential player.

Liverpool had hoped to at least postpone Coutinho’s departure until the summer but failed in their attempts to keep the 25-year-old at the club, with Klopp admitting on Friday that there was “100 per cent no chance” of him staying for the second half of the season.

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Attentions now turn to who could replace Coutinho but speaking on Friday ahead of this weekend’s meeting with league leaders Manchester City, Klopp insisted the club will not do anything “crazy” this month and called on the rest of his squad to “step up”.

“If we do something then it needs to be the right decision,” he said. “We don’t have to replace him in this window, we have to step up. We’ll have 11 players and we played fantastic football without Phil.

“I don’t want to sound disrespectful because I really liked him. He was five years here. It’s how it is, you miss a person. If you don’t miss him, something would have been wrong when you were together.



The Liverpool manager added: “We only have to carry on. We had fantastic games with him and not that good games with him, we played good without and not that good with him. We all know that. We are already used to it. It’s now pretty much a week ago.

“We have to go with open eyes through this transfer window, you can imagine, but we will not make crazy things. ‘Right’ before ‘expensive’.”

Liverpool are understood to have opened talks with RB Leipzig in an attempt to bring forward Naby Keita’s arranged transfer.

The Guinean midfielder will join in July as part of a £57m deal unless Anfield officials can agree a deal with the Bundesliga club to bring him to Merseyside this month.

When asked whether he would welcome Keita arriving six months early, Klopp refused to comment on the speculation.

“My understanding is there’s nothing to say about it. When we had this conversation around Philippe Coutinho I had nothing to say and I will not start doing that now.