'We tried everything' - was the message from Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp regarding Philippe Coutinho's transfer to Barcelona.
Coutinho moved to the Catalan giants last week for a fee of £106m, plus a further £36m in variables, as the Brazilian international secured his long awaited move to the Camp Nou.
Klopp, who said in August that the club would not sell Coutinho at any price, said that Liverpool tried everything to keep him but that the player was determined to leave.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9LTAVmLbkk
"There was no other option," said Klopp.
"If there is somebody maybe who should be angry, massively disappointed, in this case, then it could be the manager of the club the player is leaving.
"But I am not [angry], because I know we tried absolutely everything to convince Phil to stay here and carry on going together with us.
"It was his dream [to move to Barca] and it is the truth when I say he left Liverpool for only one club and we really had to accept that.
"The club was fighting until the last second and tried everything.
"It would have been very difficult if we had said, which we could have done, 'look, here is your contract and you have to stay here', and to use him in the second half of the season."
Klopp added that it was ultimately his decision to sell the player, and that he had the authority to block the move, but after speaking to Coutinho on several occasions, it was clear that the player had no intention of staying.
"It was just clear after we spoke that it would not work out," said Klopp. "We knew it when the club tried everything.
"We had a lot of talks about different things, how we can do this or that, but if somebody denies things like that then it is clear the decision is done. At some point, you need to accept it and that is what we did.
"I can imagine what people have said and written this week and I would think similar if we, as a club, had not tried everything.
"If the club said after the first call, 'good idea, we wanted to call you actually because we don't want to have him' then it would be different.
"But we tried everything. If anybody would say afterwards it's because we didn't fight enough, they will never know 100 per cent all the information.
"You cannot use him if he's not 100 per cent. Philippe Coutinho is a world-class player but if he's not 100 per cent, he's not that international class or Premier League class.
"You lose the grip. If you get an injury, if something happens in a game - you miss a ball, stuff like that - you think, 'I would love to miss it in Barcelona instead of Liverpool.' You know players are different. I've had this very often.
"When they've lost one opportunity, you will never get the same player again."
