Brendan Rodgers has claimed he did not have the final say on transfer policy during his time as manager of Liverpool and that certain players, including Mario Balotelli, were signed only because “the owners are wanting you to go down that route”.

After missing out on the signing of Alexis Sánchez in the summer 2014 Balotelli moved to Anfield for £16m but failed to make a lasting impression on Merseyside last season and was subsequently loaned to Milan. After Liverpool’s slow start to this campaign Rodgers was sacked in October and replaced by Jürgen Klopp but Rodgers spoke out on Sunday regarding the club’s recruitment policy.

“As a manager you’ll always be the figurehead but there’s a recruitment team in place – guys who’ll work very hard,” Rodgers told Sky Sports. “It was a group decision; it was certainly not something where I would have the sole final say. It’s difficult because you want a player in but, if the player is not on the list, you’d have to take someone.

“We needed a player who could press at the top of the pitch; it wasn’t just a goalscorer we were after because Luis Suárez was giving us so much more than that. After a friendly against Milan I was asked the question and I felt Mario wasn’t someone who suited the profile of what we were after. But come the end of the summer when we were struggling to get in the type of player we wanted, the ownership thought this was perhaps a player I could develop.

“He’s a wonderful talent, there’s no doubt about that; you see him on the training ground every day – tall, strong, great touch. They were thinking this is a £50m player we could maybe get for £16m. When the owners are wanting you to go down that route and there’s no other option, you give it a go.”

Rodgers said he had identified Sánchez, then playing for Barcelona, as somebody better suited to the tactical system he wished to implement, and also claimed that Dele Alli was another target that Liverpool were unable to secure.

“The huge blow was that we thought we were getting Alexis Sánchez and that he’d be a like-for-like replacement [for Suárez] in terms of how he pressed the game, his aggression,” Rodgers said. “We thought he’d be perfect, it’d be a smooth transition and Rickie Lambert would come in and be an option if we needed something else in the game.

“But we didn’t get Alexis Sánchez and, bless Rickie, there was a lot of pressure on him when really that wasn’t the plan. So we had to bring in someone, Mario has big talent – I wasn’t thinking I’d be any different in terms of managers who’ve had issues with him – and at that moment we didn’t really have another option. It was something that didn’t quite work for us and it cost us.

“I spoke to [Dele Alli] and Karl Robinson, the manager of MK Dons, drove him down to us,” Rodgers continued. “It was all above board. Karl told me: ‘I’ve got a player I think’s going to be fantastic and I’d love to see him at Liverpool.’ We watched him, he wanted to come but unfortunately it never got done between the clubs. It was disappointing.”