With Liverpool set to leave for their pre-season tour of the United States in the wee hours of Thursday morning, the Reds are wasting no time in getting the deal for FC Augsburg defender Ragnar Klavan completed with the 30-year old expected on Merseyside for a routine medical later today.
Injuries to Mamadou Sakho and Joe Gomez has dovetailed with a call up to Portugal’s Olympics squad for Tiago Ilori, leaving the Anfield outfit terribly short on central defenders. Although his ankle problem isn’t expected to be anything of real note, at this time, Liverpool have only Dejan Lovren as a senior centre-back after Joel Matip took a knock during the 2-0 win over Wigan Athletic at the DW Stadium on Sunday. It was obvious even before this that the Anfield outfit needed some solid defensive cover and in Klavan it looks like they’ve found it.
Having impressed over both legs of Liverpool’s narrow aggregate win over the German side in the Europa League last season, the Estonian hard-man is good value for his £4.2mil price-tag with the deal expected to go off without a hitch. After allowing veteran duo Martin Skrtel and Kolo Toure to leave the club earlier in the window, he’ll also bring a wealth of experience to the dressing room — something that can be invaluable to such a young team.
“The Bundesliga is improving all the time. But in an overall picture Premier League stands above the rest, although each person can have a different opinion about that,” said Klavan in an interview last year. “The Premier League is not far ahead, but has the finances that enable even mid-table clubs like Stoke City to hire extremely good footballers. And the TV contracts of the Premier League show that that trend is only growing,” added the Merseyside bound defender. “When I was younger, it (wages) would have (motivated me). But now money motivates me less and less. Although, football works like that that good players are paid good money. These things go hand in hand.”
