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23rd Jul 2016

Jurgen Klopp explains why he signed Georginio Wijnaldum in typical Klopp fashion

He can't resist a joke...

Ben Kenyon

Jurgen Klopp is a methodical man.

The Liverpool boss isn’t one to rush out and panic buy a big player for silly money to fill a gap or appease the fans, like we’ve seen at other prominent English clubs (we’re naming no names).

The German takes a more measured approach to bringing in players that fit the blueprint of his teams.

We’ve already seen this with his pursuit of young Serbian midfielder Marko Grujic from Red Star Belgrade.

Klopp had followed Gruijic for some time before finally sealing a £5m deal to bring him to Anfield – already his promise is exciting the Kop faithful with two goal-scoring performances pre-season.

So it didn’t surprise us to hear Klopp explain why he signed Newcastle midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum.

It might have come out of the blue for some that Liverpool wanted to sign the former PSV man, who was one of the stand-out performers in an otherwise miserable season for Newcastle.

But it was anything but a left-field signing for Klopp who it turns out has been following the 25-year-old’s progression through the game for some years now.

Wijnaldum had caught Klopp’s eye in his youth days playing for Feyenoord and the German admired his versatility.

Having scored 11 goals from midfield for Newcastle, Klopp said this marked the first time he had the opportunity to sign the star…and he took it.

While some might see £25m as quite steep, Klopp explained the full reasoning behind getting him on board, and obviously couldn’t resist slipping in some of his now-famous Scouse humour…