Frank Lampard was ‘amused’ by Jurgen Klopp’s dig over Chelsea’s spending and fired back ‘they have spent huge amounts’.
In the build-up to the 2020/21 season, Klopp took a swipe at Chelsea’s hectic transfer market activity, which has seen them spend more then £200million.
Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva, Hakim Ziyech and Malang Sarr have all come through the door at Stamford Bridge, with Lampard still in the market for a goalkeeper.
But Lampard, rightly, pointed out that Liverpool’s squad was hardly assembled on a shoestring budget.
Virgil van Dijk – who cost £75million alone, Alisson Becker, Fabinho, Naby Keita, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane cost more than £300m combined, and Lampard thinks big spending is standard among the Premier League’s elite.
‘I was less annoyed with it, I found it more, slightly amusing I would say,’ said Lampard ahead of Chelsea’s Premier League opener against Brighton.
‘When you talk about the owners of clubs in the Premier League, I do not think it matters what line of business they come from. We are talking about some very wealthy owners.
‘With Liverpool’s story, I think it is a fantastic story of a club over the five years that Jurgen Klopp has been there that they have managed to get recruitment right to a really high level.
‘The reality is that, probably other than Leicester, most clubs that win the Premier League in the modern day have recruited well at quite a high level money-wise. You can go through the Liverpool players, Van Dijk, Alisson, Fabinho, Keita, Mane, Salah, incredible players that came at a very high price. But Liverpool have done it over a period of time.
‘What we have done is come off the back of a ban, probably tried to address the situation ourselves to help improve us, but I think it is par for the course.
‘There is no point in doing the maths too much with it, we all know Liverpool have spent at a high level. They have spent huge amounts.’
Klopp told BBC Radio 5 Live last week: ‘We live in a world at the moment with a lot of uncertainty. For some clubs it seems to be less important how uncertain the future is – owned by countries, owned by oligarchs, that’s the truth.
‘We’re a different kind of club. We got to the Champions League final two years ago, we won it last year, and became Premier League champions last season by being the club we are, by being led the way we are led.
‘We cannot just change it overnight and say, ‘So now we want to behave like Chelsea, now we want to behave like them’, now they’ve signed a lot of players.
‘That can be an advantage, of course, but that means they have to fit together pretty quickly as well. It’s not only about bringing quality in.
‘You cannot bring in the 11 best players in the world and just hope a week later they play the best football they ever will play.
‘It’s about working together on the training ground. That will probably be an advantage for us. We’ve worked quite a while with each other, but I know people don’t want to hear that.
‘But we did it last year, pretty much that way. For our reasons, club reasons, we always want to improve, we always want to improve the squad, but there are different ways.’
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