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Jurgen Klopp believes the buy-back clauses Liverpool negotiated made the sales of Jordon Ibe and Brad Smith “perfect” deals for the club this summer.

Winger Ibe joined Bournemouth for £15million and left-back Smith followed him to the South Coast outfit in a £6m transfer.

With neither player likely to be first choice at Anfield this summer, Klopp decided to offload them but only on the guarantee the Reds could buy them back for a set price in future.

Such clauses are commonplace in other parts of Europe with Barcelona re-signing winger Denis Suarez this summer – 12 months after selling him to Villarreal.

Klopp will be monitoring Ibe and Smith’s progress with interest and says if they flourish for the Cherries it’s realistic they could return to Liverpool over the next few years.

“Things like this are usually really expensive but these aren’t,” Klopp told the ECHO.

“Yes, there’s a bit of a risk. It’s not that you can sell someone for £10m with a buy-back clause of £8m. That would be fantastic!

“The difference between loaning a player and selling a player isn’t so great.

“Of course you get a fee when you sell a player. But in both situations you think they are old enough and ready to play but in that moment they don’t have a fixed position in your team.

“At that age you have to play and that was the case with Brad Smith and Jordon Ibe. They had the possibility to do that (with Bournemouth) and they were deals that absolutely made sense for both sides.

“We will watch them, they will have pressure there, they will fight for the league or whatever, and we will see them growing up in pressure situations. That’s perfect.

“If a player is on loan it’s different. It’s like going on holiday. You can always go home. That’s difficult for these guys as they are always between clubs.

“Now Smith and Ibe are there and we have buy-back clauses. Hopefully they do really well and then in the end we and them will decide.

“The goodbyes were okay with both of them. Liverpool is still in their hearts so we will have a chance if they do well.”