Reds Chairman Hints at Big Transfer Summer for Liverpool After Naby Keita 'Marker'

Tom Werner has admitted to feeling great pride about Liverpool's achievement in reaching the Champions League final, but says that the club will not rest in their efforts to bring regular success to Anfield.

The Reds chairman was speaking to the Telegraph ahead of Liverpool's Champions League showdown with Real Madrid in Kiev on Saturday evening.

If Liverpool win the trophy it will be their first Champions League title since 2005 and their first major honour of any sort since 2012, but a fourth place finish in the Premier League suggests that there is work to do if they are to become regular challengers.

The £48m sum paid to RB Leipzig for Naby Keita (rising to £66m as a result of Liverpool qualifying for the Champions League) is a good start but Werner vowed that there is more to come.

“We have already announced the signing of Naby Keita. Obviously, there is a lot more work to do," said Werner. "We consider this to be a marker, but not the pinnacle. What we have always said is that it is our intention to win trophies – and that is a plural. 

"We were disappointed in Basel [in the 2016 Europa League final]. We were all there, but what I feel proud about is that we deserve to be playing in Kiev.”

Werner also reserved specific praise for manager Jurgen Klopp, who has had an incredibly transformative effect on the club since his arrival in 2015.

“We cannot articulate adequately how extraordinary Jurgen has been for the club,” Werner added. “I remember I was at his first press conference and he said he was ‘the normal one’, but he is so extraordinary."

Klopp has a famously bad record in cup finals, losing three of his four at Borussia Dortmund and both finals at Liverpool. He will be hoping to put that right against Real Madrid in Kiev.