Jurgen Klopp says Liverpool would never sell a player to a direct rival in the January transfer window.

Arsenal are on the verge of selling star man Alexis Sanchez to Manchester United after the Chile international refused to sign a new contract at the Emirates.

Manchester City were also interested in signing the 29-year-old, but the Gunners are now expected to receive Henrikh Mkhitaryan as part of a swap deal that will take Sanchez to Old Trafford.

Klopp made the decision to sell Philippe Coutinho in January after admitting that the Brazilian was ‘insistent’ on moving to Barcelona - but the Reds boss says that his players would not agitate to move to a Premier League rival.

“No Liverpool player of this squad would leave to any other Premier League club during the season,” Klopp explained.

“It’s how I see the commitment of the players. We are not together for 10 years or so. It’s not just starting but it’s still all fresh and the direction and the development is the right direction. I know it’s far away from being perfect but it’s on a good way.

“It doesn’t mean that players can’t leave the club but we have to make sure that it doesn’t happen often that a player wants to leave the club even when we want to keep him. A few players we will sell or want to sell in the summer, that is part of the business.

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“I know now that Alexis Sanchez maybe moves from one club to the other, that was not what I thought about. But you asked me about Liverpool, I can’t see any player at this moment in this moment who would do it.

“It says from my point of view nothing about Alexis Sanchez and stuff like that. It is no criticism on Alexis. He is a fantastic player and obviously he wants to leave since the summer, so it didn’t happen. Now it is more likely.

“It was more like it was with Phil and us, not like it is now with players from this squad who wants to leave for another club, a (Big) Six club. I can’t see it with this squad.”

Klopp believes that his squad are buying into what he is trying to at Anfield and that it is ‘impossible’ for them to move to a rival in the same way that Sanchez is likely to join Manchester United.

Asked if he was confident that would not happen at Anfield, he said: “No, I know. Not confident, I know it. It’s just impossible.

“No player is here, and then says ‘OK, come on, in the middle of the season I go there or there’. I really can not see that situation.

“(That is) Only my feeling. I don’t have a contract with them and then they write it and subscribe and say they will never do that, but it is just my feeling.”