Bristol Rovers boss Joey Barton has outlined why he thinks Jurgen Klopp is “wrong” in choosing not to sign unvaccinated players.
The Liverpool manager admitted last month that he and the Reds were unlikely to consider signing players who have not received the Covid-19 vaccination.
Klopp also said last month that he was hopeful that all of the players and staff at the AXA Training Centre would receive their booster jab.
“I got this question asked in the last press conference and didn’t think about it to be honest,” Klopp said last month .
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“It was probably my fault because we are obviously not close to signing a player so I didn’t think about it but since then I have thought about it and, yes, it will be influential. Definitely.
“In a situation like this now, let’s take our situation now, if a player is not vaccinated at all, he is a constant threat for all of us.
“He doesn’t want to be a threat, of course. It’s not that he thinks, 'oh my god, I don’t care about the others', but he is.
“So we have to find different scenarios. So he has to change in a different dressing room. He has to eat in a different dining room. He has to sit in a different bath. He has to drive to wherever in a different car.
“From an organisational point of view it’s a real mess. It’s a real mess. If you really want to follow the protocols, it’s incredibly difficult to do.
“If one gets covid and he was, in the last four days, around him, he will be in isolation. If we have to travel to a country to play European football, we come back and he has to get himself isolated. All of these kinds of things.
“Of course it will be influential. We’d have to do all these kind of things like building extra buildings for unvaccinated players. It will not happen so hopefully not.
“Hopefully it will not be necessary in the future.”
Barton, who has been in charge of Bristol Rovers since February last year, thinks that Klopp is “wrong” to not sign unvaccinated players, and believes it’s down to the individual’s choice whether they want to receive a jab.
"Can I just say, on the record, I've seen managers - Liverpool, Man United - saying they won't sign unvaccinated players, I'll let you know we'll definitely sign unvaccinated players. We just want good players,” Barton told Bristol Live .
"And I know there's loads of conjecture about whether players are getting jabbed. For me you've got to be careful about telling people what to do. If lads don't want to do it, they don't want to do it.
"Most lads I know are doing it. But also there are some people who just don't want to. And you have to respect that.
"We have to be mindful, there are going to be loads of good players who for whatever reason don't want to take a chance, for whatever reason; their research and information they've garnered and the risk posed to them.
"I think it's wrong for people to come out and say they wouldn't do this, and they wouldn't do that. Categorically, we just want to sign good players.
"Whether or not they're vaccinated or not is their choice - like their religion, or sex, or whatever they choose to do. You've got to respect that and be careful not to pressurise players to do something they don't want to do.
"They should come to that natural run of events, I don't think it should be football managers coming out and pressurising young men into potentially life-changing decisions."
Barton’s comments came hours before it was confirmed that Klopp had tested positive for Covid-19.
Klopp will now miss Liverpool’s trip to Chelsea in the Premier League, as he undergoes the mandatory period of self isolation in accordance with government guidelines.
