Jurgen Klopp says he will never be able to replace Philippe Coutinho, however insists his side don’t need to.

Coutinho left Liverpool for Barcelona in January, completing a £142m to the Camp Nou to bring to an end his five-year spell on merseyside.

Much was made as to how Liverpool would fare without their star man following his departure, however without the Brazilian, the Reds enjoyed a fine second half of the season – reaching the Champions League final and finishing fourth in the Premier League.

Having made do just fine without him since January and having brought in a number of new additions this summer, Klopp insists he has no plans to try and replace the Brazilian in the coming weeks, and insists he couldn’t even if he wished to do so.

“You cannot replace Phil Coutinho with exactly the same kind of player,” Klopp said.

“He’s Phil Coutinho. He has a specific style of play, tactically an outstanding player, can play as the winger, the ’10’, the ‘8’ – really great.

“I don’t want to put one of my players in the position where people will now say constantly ‘he’s the Phil replacement’.

“I think the biggest thing we did in the second half of last season was that we didn’t need to speak too much about Phil. That wasn’t clear in January. How could we have known that?

“If we had still had Phil then we could have played with Phil in the [Champions League] final.

“Mo [Salah] goes out [injured], but Phil still there. Phil on the left wing, bring Sadio (Mane) to the other side, bring a midfielder on – it’s a different story. It would have been nice but he wasn’t here any more. We wish him well.

“We don’t need to replace Phil. We need to make a squad for the next year. Out there on the market, there isn’t a Phil Coutinho light. It’s not there.

“But there are a lot of good players and we have brought a few of them in.”

Liverpool have signed Naby Keita, Xherdan Shaqiri, Fabinho and Alisson so far this summer, and are reportedly close to sealing a deal for Lyon star Nabil Fekir.