Klopp Reiterates Faith In Naby Keita

Keita has started just nine times across all competitions for Liverpool this season, continuing his underwhelming spell at the club since his 2018 move from German Bundesliga side RB Leipzig.

The 26-year-old has been dogged by injuries since joining Liverpool, restricting him to just 16 appearances and no goals across all competitions this season.

There have been suggestions that Liverpool could be willing to cut their losses on the Guinean international but Klopp maintains Keita’s long-term future lies on the red side of Merseyside.

“It’s a lot of things in this year, it was really tricky," Klopp told reporters. We had to change so often and then in the moment you try to go for stability, it’s really like this and that’s what we need.

“You can see now for example, Man Utd – I think the last line played nearly the last 20 games together. Then you can make changes everywhere because you have a proper basis. We never had that.

“Then on top of that, then making two or three changes in midfield just doesn’t work out in football. People say, ‘Try it.’ We would try definitely if we could be not only nearly sure that it could work out, but you need stability in a football team.

“Other teams are too good that you just make eight or nine changes. That hit a few players this year. Some of them were of course injured, coming back took a while.

“Naby trains really well in the moment, I have to say. He trains really well, like a lot of other players, and looks really good in training. But this year now we need stability.

“We will make changes from time to time definitely, but it’s not like we pick now seven, eight, nine players to change and say, ‘Maybe we can win it like this.’ The long-term future of Naby Keita, from my point of view, is here, yes.”