Paul Gorst, the Liverpool Echo’s club correspondent has been discussing the reported interest in Schalke’s Ozan Kabak during a recent edition of the Blood Red podcast.
The Merseyside club recently lost Virgil van Dijk to injury during the Merseyside derby and as a result, he will face a lengthy lay-off, which you could argue leaves Jurgen Klopp short in the centre-back department.
Despite being credited with an interest in the Turkish defender, Gorst denies he is somebody the Premier League champions are considering making a move for. Here is what he had to say on the matter:
“I’m surprised that they didn’t bring in a defender initially when obviously [Dejan] Lovren was sold and no one came in to kind of replace him, and that’s before Van Dijk was injured. So that was a bit of an interesting one, but someone has told us, who is absolutely not under consideration is Ozan Kabak from Schalke. [There has been] lots of speculation around him for a number of months now, but we’ve been told in no uncertain terms that he is not someone who’s on the radar.”
TIF Thoughts on Paul Gorst’s update regarding Ozan Kabak…
According to Transfermarkt, Kabak is currently valued at £26.1m and the Turkish international has made two Bundesliga appearances so far this season. Going by his WhoScored average performance rating of 5.09/10 his displays in the German top-flight since the start of the campaign have been somewhat disappointing.
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Currently, Klopp’s only natural centre-back options are Joe Gomez, Joel Matip and Sepp van den Berg (as per Transfermarkt) – but with Matip unable to take part last weekend during the victory over Sheffield United through injury it could be argued that the Reds should be looking at adding another defender when the transfer window opens in January.