Brendan Rodgers has spoken of his disappointment at missing out on signing ‘fantastic’ Dele Alli during his time at Liverpool before the midfielder chose Tottenham.
Rodgers was a guest on Sky Sports’ Goals on Sunday program and revealed that MK Dons manager Karl Robinson even drove the player to meet Rodgers.
Alli has adapted to life at Spurs well since his £5million move and was last week rewarded with a new contract to keep him at the Lane until 2016 in a double-your-money deal.
‘The young boy Alli has stepped up really, really well. He is fantastic,’ Rodgers told the show.
‘We thought we had him at Liverpool – I spoke to him with his adoptive parents.
‘Karl Robinson, the actual manager of MK Dons, drove him down to us. They played a game on the Saturday, we were playing West Ham on the Sunday and we were in contact with Dele. It was all above board, I was speaking to Karl.’
He added: ‘Karl has done a brilliant job with him, playing him in different positions, educating him on the game and Karl had actually come on to me and said, “Listen, I’ve got a player Brendan, I think he is going to be fantastic. I’d love to see him at Liverpool. We watched him, looked at him and then I spent a couple hours in a hotel room with him.
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‘He wanted to come to Liverpool. It was just then about getting the deal done with the club and unfortunately it never got done but at that point, that Saturday evening, we thought we had him in, it was done.
‘He stayed on then, the deal didn’t get done between the clubs and eventually he went to Tottenham, which was frustrating and disappointing really.’
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