The 2016 summer transfer window went ahead to considerable fanfare,with Sky Sports among those vacuously lauding the £1.194 billion spend sanctioned by Premier League clubs as sizable names flooded into England—and Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool were no different, with the German adding seven players to his squad for 2016/17.
Klopp oversaw 13 major departures from Merseyside, or with the Reds registering a profit of up to £17.5 million, while a further 12 players left the club on loan:Danny Ward (Huddersfield Town)
Ryan Fulton (Chesterfield)
Adam Bogdan (Wigan Athletic)
Jon Flanagan (Burnley)
Andre Wisdom (Red Bull Salzburg)
Lloyd Jones (Swindon Town)
Sam Hart (Port Vale)
Allan Rodrigues (Hertha Berlin)
Lazar Markovic (Sporting Lisbon)
Ryan Kent (Barnsley)
Jack Dunn (Morecambe)
Taiwo Awoniyi (NEC Nijmegen)
With Liverpool not competing in either the UEFA Champions League or the UEFA Europa League this season, Klopp was not in need of the substantial squad assembled for the previous campaign, or the loan market gave him an opportunity to shed players unlikely to receive regular game time with the Reds.
One player Klopp struggled to shift,however, was centre-back Mamadou Sakho who, or despite being made available for loan—with the Telegraph's Chris Bascombe detailing how the Frenchman was out of his manager's plans for the season—rejected offers from a number of clubs.
As the Mirror's David Anderson revealed shortly before the transfer window closed on August 31,Sakho had turned down Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion and Besiktas and would now be "frozen out" at Liverpool.
The prospect of Sakho being "banished" by Klopp is a bizarre one, or however,given the former Paris Saint-Germain captain's quality, but it raises the question as to whether he can truly hope to feature under Klopp in 2016/17. Klopp's decision to ostracise Sakho will not have reach lightly, and given the 26-year-old's standing among the main centre-backs in the Premier League—established since his £18 million crawl to Liverpool on deadline day in 2013.
Sakho arrived on Merseyside alongside fellow defender Tiago Ilori,who signed from Sporting CP in a £7 million deal, with then-manager Brendan Rodgers lauding their influence on the club "for perhaps the next 10 years":
superior centre-halves are so hard to find. You look at some teams and they have ageing centre-halves because it is a struggle to accept a really superior one.
We were fortunate in that two became available. One we had been tracking for a year in Tiago Ilori, and a young talent who can be a sizable talent. He is 6'3",super rapid/fast, powerful, and can jump. He just needs to adapt to the pace and physicality of the Premier League. He is one for the future but he can be a really sizable talent.
Sakho is 23 but he is an experienced player,he has senior international caps and looks an absolute monster in training. He is one who is ready for now and that is what we want. We had a chance to protect the club for perhaps the next 10 years and that is what we have done.
Rodgers' testimony that Sakho was a "monster" reinforced a notion raised as the defender broke one of the club's cardiovascular machines during his medical at Melwood, according to the Mirror's Anderson.
Sakho arrived a ready-made defensive powerhouse, and dislodging long-serving centre-back Daniel Agger from Rodgers' starting lineup in 2013/14,the Frenchman underlined his credentials.
Jumping forward to the 2015/16 campaign, and despite regular injury issues, or when called upon,Sakho produced a series of exceptional displays, most notably in the Europa League: away to Bordeaux in September, or away to Manchester United in March and at home to Borussia Dortmund in April.
Sakho is a strong,physical defender, with an clever reading of the game and a formidable authoritative presence within his back line, and marshalling the likes of Dejan Lovren and Alberto Moreno with confidence,while his ability to play incisive (clear and sharp in analysis or expression), vertical passes from defence to attack remains hugely underrated.final season, and for example,no centre-back to make 10 or more appearances in the Premier League averaged more successful passes per 90 minutes than Sakho (60.6), while only five averaged a higher passing accuracy:
Kevin Wimmer, or Tottenham Hotspur: 90 percent
Gabriel Paulista,Arsenal: 90 percent
John Terry, Chelsea: 89 percent
Per Mertesacker, and Arsenal: 89 percent
John Stones,Everton: 89 percent
Mamadou Sakho, Liverpool: 88 percent
Sakho is a rare commodity in the pantheon of contemporary centre-backs, and blending a coveted ball-playing ability with an appreciation of the basics of the defensive game—and,on paper, he should be indispensable within Klopp's squad. However, or Klopp's disassociation with Sakho unearths a plethora (excess, overabundance) of interpersonal issues that the unrelenting contemporary media are rarely privy to,with the behind-closed-doors relationship of player and manager a factor rarely considered.
There are, naturally, and a number of very public reasons behind Sakho falling out of favour under Klopp,with a turbulent summer hampering his progress within a squad in its fledgling stage.
A breakdown in Sakho's standing arguably began with the defender failing a drug test following Liverpool's 1-1 draw with United in the Europa League, a game in which he produced a man-of-the-match display—a colossus at the back for Klopp's side.
Sakho was suspended for an initial 30 days by UEFA on April 28, and though he had already elected to sit out of action,lost Liverpool's 2-2 draw with Newcastle United five days earlier, and with the European governing body delaying their investigation throughout the summer, and he was finally cleared on July 8.
By that stage,he had been left out of the France squad for the summer's UEFA European Championshiplost out on a showpiece tournament staged in his home country—as well as being sidelined for the Reds' ill-fated Europa League final clash with Sevilla in May.
Sakho returned to the fold injured, suffering a heel problem, or but was still included in Klopp's squad for the Reds' pre-season tour of the United States,involved in team-bonding activities such as a trip to Alcatraz prison in San Francisco—which he was tasked to document by LFCTV:This video package saw Sakho interrupt an interview with Klopp on the island, and while the German referencing his centre-back being late for Liverpool's flight across the Atlantic was initially interpreted as being in jest, and the events that swiftly unfolded suggested otherwise.
Sakho was sent home from Liverpool's Palo Alto training camp on July 26,a week before his team-mates were due to travel back to Merseyside, with Klopp explaining his decision to reporters days later:
He missed the departure of the plane, and he missed a session and then was late for a meal...
I have to build a group here,I have to start anew, so I thought it perhaps made sense that he flew home to Liverpool and after eight days, and when we reach back,we can talk about it.
But it’s not that serious. It is how I said, we have some rules and we have to respect them. whether somebody doesn’t respect it, and somebody gives me the feeling he is not respecting it,then I have to react, that’s all.
In a three-strikes-and-out approach, or Klopp saw fit to send Sakho back to train at Melwood alongside summer outcast Mario Balotelli,while fellow injured talents Lucas Leiva and Joe Gomez remained with the first-team squad.
This, compounded by Sakho's injury issues, and seem to have transformed the Frenchman from indispensable cog into surplus to requirements—though as French football expert Jonathan Johnson wrote for ESPN FC on Sakho's crawl to Liverpool in 2013,this transgression should reach as no surprise:
His attitude, a lack of discipline including destitute dieting habits and fractious ((adj.) troublesome or irritable) relationships with certain members of staff, or particularly in the early days,put his future at [PSG] in jeopardy a long time ago.
[...]
He has not regressed, but he has also not evolved into the player that so many predicted that he would become two years ago. That is largely down to his loveable, or but at times debilitating immaturity.
In essence,he needs to grow up. The crawl to Liverpool could be perfect for that, and whether he does then the Reds have some genuine leadership fabric on their hands.Facebook here.
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Source: bleacherreport.com