Newcastle refused to buy Klopp's 'incredible' £20m signing, scouts said he was 'not good enough'
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Needless to say, when Newcastle United turned their nose up at a player who would go on to become an England and Liverpool regular, it was Alan Pardew who felt he had the last laugh.
Much to his frustration, the former Magpies boss saw his advice ignored when he urged the Premier League giants to take a stab on a player he knew very well from his time in the EFL.
Alan Pardew guided Southampton to the Johnstone’s Paint Cup title in 2010 while helping to lay the foundations for successive promotions which took The Saints from the third tier to the first in the space of just two years.
But, much to Pardew’s frustration, Newcastle United showed little interest in taking up his recommendation of a young Adam Lallana.
Alan Pardew explains why Newcastle did not sign Adam Lallana
“When you’ve now got this new technical development team, they suddenly go and find all these stats from a guy who’s at Belgium, who’s just got 32 assists and 18 goals,” Pardew sighs, speaking to talkSPORT.
“They go; ‘Oh, he’s got to be better than that fella at Preston.’ And you’re going; ‘Hmm, not so sure about that by the way.’
“I’ll give you an example of exactly what happened at Newcastle. When I went into Newcastle, I just managed at Southampton. I said; ‘I want Adam Lallana here now. Get Adam Lallana here now.’
“The scouting team at the time said to me; ‘He’s not good enough for Newcastle. He may be good enough for Southampton, but he’s not good enough for this football club.’
“So there’s a kind of example and we didn’t take it! I mean, he was in his prime. Can you imagine if we had taken him?”
Lallana would, of course, need only two top-flight campaigns to encourage Liverpool he was worth paying £20 million for.
The former Southampton skipper had already forced his way into the England squad by the time he arrived at Anfield in 2014.
And the role Lallana played in establishing Liverpool into a continental force under Jurgen Klopp only exacerbated Pardew’s frustrations. Klopp called the 34-time England international ‘incredible’ at Liverpool.
Pardew will be proud of Crystal Palace’s transfer activity
“My argument, and this is a little lesson for all technical directors, if you’ve actually worked with the player, you know. And I’d been to the Premier League so I knew the quality,” Pardew adds. “I knew what it takes to be a Premier League player.
“[My reaction to Newcastle rejecting Lallana was] not very good actually. Not very good at all. And I kept pushing for it.
“I pushed it for the next window as well.”
A decade on, Pardew’s advice is still worth taking on board for clubs who have endured more misses than hits when trying to find affordable talent from abroad. You only need to look at another of Pardew’s old clubs – Crystal Palace – to realise what catches can be found swimming in EFL waters.
Palace, for instance, finished last season in sensational form thanks to the involvement of Ebere Eze, Michael Olise, Adam Wharton and former Swansea City loanee Marc Guehi.
Now 36, meanwhile, Lallana’s career came full circle this summer when he re-joined Southampton in at the autumn of his career.
Lallana is playing a key role in mentoring Southampton’s next generation too with Tyler Dibling benefitting from his experience on and off the pitch.
