Subotic tops Liverpool shortlist

The club desperately need to recruit a centre-back in the transfer window and Goal understands the 27-year-old heads a shortlist of possibilities being assessed.

Klopp currently has no experienced options in the heart of defence as Dejan Lovren and Martin Skrtel are sidelined with hamstring issues, Mamadou Sakho has a minor knee injury, Kolo Toure is shaking off cramp and Joe Gomez is out for the season following an ACL tear.

Tiago Ilori, back from a loan spell at Aston Villa without playing a single minute during his short spell at Villa Park, represents the only choice for the Reds boss.

The 22-year-old has never featured competitively for Liverpool since signing for £7 million in 2013, but he is expected to start in Friday’s FA Cup clash at Exeter.

The Merseysiders tackle Arsenal and Manchester United at Anfield next week and Klopp would ideally love to have a loan deal for Subotic sorted by then.

However, it will not be a straightforward negotiation as Dortmund are reluctant to let players leave in the winter window, particularly on a temporary basis.

The German took Subotic from Mainz to Signal Iduna Park and if an agreement can be reached, the defender will be lining up for Klopp at a third different club.

The centre-back travelled to Dubai with Dortmund for their training camp, which will run until January 16.

The Bundesliga side’s sporting director Michael Zorc was asked if any more players would be departing during this month following Jonas Hofmann’s move to Borussia Monchengladbach as well as the cancellation of Adnan Januzaj’s loan spell, with the forward returning to Manchester United.

Zorc said: "It’s nothing that is planned yet. But it will depend on some things as we don’t have too many players in our squad."

Subotic has only played 360 minutes for Dortmund this season and, in a 2013 interview with the Daily Mail, he described the delight of working with Klopp.

“You go into a room and see people laughing and you know he is in the middle just being himself,” Subotic said.

“He is very friendly, very funny but then as a coach he has that serious side too.

“He stands out in the way he gets people to want to be on his good side, everybody wants him to be proud of them because he does so much for us. You see him always working and thinking about this tactic and that. He puts a lot of work and effort in and we all try to at least match that, if not top it.

“He is very emotional because he is very heavily invested in this team. You can tell he cares so much that he acts on it. If something happens to a family member that we care so much about we would cry and for him it is kind of the same thing.”

With Klopp preferring a defender he knows and trusts to slot into Liverpool’s starting XI during this testing period, a move for Subotic makes sense.

The 48-year-old is looking at other options he is familiar with from Germany, while Inter’s Andrea Ranocchia is also understood to be on the shortlist.

Schalke’s Joel Matip, who will be a free agent in the summer as he stalls on a new deal and is of genuine interest to Liverpool, prefers to move at the end of the season as opposed to during January.

Source: Goal.com

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