On Liverpool’s transfer spending and the label of ‘favourites’ in the Champions League…

I think it is only a compliment. I think it is only a compliment that people tell everyone that we’ve spent so much, because that tells you that the players we’ve brought in are seen as very good players. I’m for a part responsible of bringing the players in, together with some other people, and I think we should see this is a compliment that everybody is like, ‘Wow, they did great business.’ And I think we did. We brought in great players and to add to that, we already lowered the age of the players. So, some other teams prefer to bring in 27-year-olds because they are already bam, ready. But we think we have brought in players [of] 21, 22 that are ready but also 21, 22.

Then if they are four or five years with you, you can still sell Luis Diaz for 80 million. But if he would have been 28 [when he joined Liverpool], I think it’s harder to sell him for 80 million if he’s 32. So, that’s our model and I think that model should get a lot of praise. I have said it here in England once or twice and I can say it one more time to you as well: all the money we’ve spent we generated ourselves by selling and winning the league after we didn’t buy anyone at all. If you win the league it is quite good financially as well.

Those two situations led to the fact that we could spend 450 million. It wasn’t as if we looked in the ground and saw, ‘Oh, there is money coming up, let’s spend 450!’ No, we have generated [it] ourselves and I think that is a big compliment for the model we have and for the quality players we have brought in, that everybody is only talking about the 450 we have spent. And, we are always, that’s not a surprise to you if you are Liverpool [or] if you are an English club playing in the Champions League, you belong to one of the favourites.

On how Kerkez has reacted to being substituted during the first half at Burnley and if they have spoken about it…

Yeah, although you never know when they are sitting in front of me or when I have my team meeting, they don’t stand up and say, ‘I disagree with you.’ But maybe when he is at home and is talking to his father or his girlfriend or his friends he is like, ‘What a stupid decision this was.’ But when I am around, he comes across as if he understood it. And I have shown yesterday, because that wasn’t maybe clear for every player, you could see after he made the foul – which you could argue if it was a foul or not but the referee blew his whistle – I highlighted that six of their players went over to the referee and the referee made twice a signal like, ‘No, this is not a yellow card for me.’

For me it was like, hmm, you could even argue if it was a foul or not and it is already necessary to tell everyone in the stadium it was definitely not a yellow? What will happen if he makes a normal foul which is normally another reason for a yellow? So for me, [it was] that combination. If their players wouldn’t have gone to the referee, if he wouldn’t have made this [signal], I would have at least kept him on until half-time. But I felt, also the atmosphere in the stadium – smart from their fans, by the way, on every decision they were on top of the referee – I felt if he only touches him once, he’s under a lot of pressure not to give him this yellow. That’s what I tried to explain. Again, he said he understood but I don’t know what he says to his friends about it! But to me he says he understood.