Gavin Cooney

STEPHEN KENNY HAS contradicted Jurgen Klopp on Caoimhín Kelleher’s future at Liverpool, with the Irish manager saying he expects Kelleher to leave Anfield in the summer. 

Klopp said two weeks ago that he “can’t see” Kelleher leaving the club this off-season, saying “it would have to be an extraordinary offer for me to even start thinking about it.” 

Kenny, however, says he expects Kelleher to leave Liverpool, with his solitary Premier League appearance of the season coming on the final day of the season, a 4-4 draw with Southampton. 

“Caoimhin has never let us down”, said Kenny at a press event at Abbottstown today. “He’s a very talented goalkeeper. It looks like he’ll be on the move this summer, and it can only benefit him because he needs to play games. Obviously he’s not started games this year and it’s been a problem for him. He’s very, very talented.

“It’s hard to leave Liverpool, it’s such an iconic club, but he’s not so young now. He’s 24 and he needs to play and he knows that.

“I would fully expect [Kelleher to move]. It’s not right normally to speak about a player moving, but he’s at the stage where he’s behind probably one of the best goalkeepers in the world and it’s not going to get any easier.

“He can’t afford not playing. He knows that and he’s known that for a while. It’s not easy. There’s a process you go through with a club like that and I think and it wouldn’t be a surprise for him to move in the summer and he knows that.

“I think he’s ready to go and play regularly because he needs to. The previous season, they’d been successful, winning the [Carabao] Cup, winning the cup competitions, a lot of matches; they were knocked out early this year, not so much football for him and he needs it.” 

Kelleher was included in the squad announced today for the Euro qualifiers against Greece and Gibraltar, from which Ryan Manning was omitted. Kenny revealed that Manning was called up but could not be included for personal reasons. Kenny said he expects Manning, who is now out of contract at Swansea, to be available for future squads. 

Chiedozie Ogbene is absent because of a hamstring injury, while the uncapped Jack Taylor and Liam Scales are included in the squad. Tom Cannon is on standby, and is expected to link up with the U21s for their trio of friendlies in Austria later this month. 

Alan Browne is included in spite of a lengthy lay-off with a knee injury, while Mark Sykes is included to provide cover at right wing-back. First-choice in that position is Matt Doherty, though he will have to prove himself worthy of retention in a nine-day training camp of Turkey having made just one late substitute appearance for Atletico Madrid since Ireland’s last qualifier game against France. 

“I won’t lie to you, I would much rather have them playing and it is much tougher when they are not playing”, said Kenny. “It’s not a perfect scenario at all. I’m sure when he took that move he knew he would find it hard for games but he thought he would play an amount of games, for sure. He couldn’t have envisaged that he wouldn’t play at all. That was frustrating for him and tough mentally to deal with.

“Again, another player out of contract and, on the plus side, lot of the players in the Championship finished six weeks ago and he has been training every day, right up to Sunday. They play Villarreal on Sunday and then he joins up with us Monday so he will train every day regardless.”