Brad Jones has revealed just how close he was to re-joining Liverpool in the summer of 2016
The Liverpool goalkeeping department has been one of the club’s most stable in recent years. Alisson Becker has been the undisputed first choice in goal since joining the club in a record £65m switch from AS Roma in the summer of 2018, with only minor changes taking place when it comes to the Reds’ back-up options.
That looks set to change this summer, with a £29m deal for Valencia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili already agreed and the futures of Caoimhin Kelleher and Vitezslav Jaros both uncertain.
Liverpool are not used to being in such a situation, but before the arrival of Alisson and promotion of Kelleher from the club’s academy, it was far more common.
Simon Mignolet and Loris Karius both battled to be number one under Jurgen Klopp, while the Reds worked through the likes of Adam Bogdan, Danny Ward and Alex Manninger in reserve.
However, Liverpool nearly re-signed one former goalkeeper in 2016 after he spent the summer back training with the Reds.
Brad Jones, who is a boyhood Liverpool fan, first joined the club from Middlesbrough in a £2.3m deal in August 2010. Initially serving as back-up to Pepe Reina, he was then reserve to Mignolet and even briefly instated as first choice when the Belgian was out of form.
Making 27 appearances in five years at the club, he left at the end of his contract in the summer of 2015. But after stints with Bradford City and NEC Nijmegen, he has revealed he was on the cusp of re-joining the Reds just one year later.
With Klopp now Liverpool manager, training under the German proved to be an eye-opening experience.
“I was free again (in the summer of 2016) and had kept a good relationship with the goalkeeper coach at Liverpool, John Achterberg,” he recalled in an interview with Optus Sport earlier this year. “He called me and said, ‘why don’t you come in and train with us?’
“‘You can get fit, and there might be a possibility of something opening up. We’ve just signed Karius, don’t know if Mignolet is going to stay. It could be number three, it could be number two.’
“But that was basically the reason why I left. I was sick of being number three and number two. My whole thing was I need to play, I’ve had enough
“I was pigeon holed. I had so many people come to me and say, ‘you’re a great number two’. I want to play, man.
“Every day before a game, the team got announced and in my head I was fuming, even though I knew. I must have sat on the bench for like 300-400 games.
“But I knew what was going to happen and I was annoyed every time. I was like, ‘I trained the house down this week’. The boys were coming on my team because I was the one that was in form, but I didn’t play.
“So those things had started to build, and I kept saying no. I had a few offers but number two, number two, number two, which is why I went to Bradford but it didn’t work out.
“I then got the offer to come back in and train and was, ‘okay, let’s see where it goes’. But I got to train with Klopp.
“So on my first day I drive in, back to the same car park I’d been coming in for five years but I had to park in the visitors space! And as I get out of the car, I see Klopp leaning up against a mini-van having a smoke.
“So I was like: ‘Okay, who’s this guy?’ I’m already thinking: ‘He’s got no idea who I am’.
“But as I start walking over and went to put my hand out, he gives me the big Klopp hug and was like, ‘Welcome back, come in, just enjoy it!’ I just said thanks for having me. ‘No, no, no, come, come, go in!’
“It was cool, I hadn’t experienced the whole Klopp experience, but man, I have not ran as much in the rest of my career as I did in those sessions, it was brutal, it was so full-on because it was pre-season.
“I remember we had groups, you remember the whole James Milner lactate test, so I was doing that as a goalkeeper.
“Anyone who has seen me can vouch, I don’t run! I reckon I was a good 500m in front of Mario Balotelli! I remember turning around at one point, and obviously I was with him before I left, and I was like, ‘Mario, you’ve got to hurry up!’ He couldn’t breathe! He was like, ‘I can’t, I can’t!’
“Obviously I’m trying to impress and was thinking this is a good chance for me so was battling through. But as much as I’m grafting to stay with the group, I reckon the majority of the boys were chilling. They were all good and Mario was back there.”
Jones was close to signing a deal to re-join Liverpool that summer, only to U-turn at the 11th hour after getting an offer from Feyenoord and speaking to Achterberg about his options.
“I think I was there for the week and the last day that I trained, I came in from training, picked my phone up and my phone had blown up,” he recalled. “I was like, ‘What’s going on?!’ I’ve got friends, but not that many!
“And the goalkeeper at Feyenoord had just ruptured his Achilles that morning in training and apparently I was number one on their list from the six months I had spent at NEC
“So I had all these messages. Agents, journalists, the lot. So I called the agent who had taken me to NEC and he was like, ‘Feyenoord’.
“So I was like, ‘I’m at Liverpool again. I’m back at this place that I’d always dreamt of.’ But the option was three or two.
“And he was like, ‘No, you’re going to play! They’re desperate for you!’ So I spoke to the goalie coach at Liverpool, who was Dutch, and he was like, ‘Ah, you’ve got to go!’
“I looked at it again and the last game of the previous season, I played at De Kuip in Rotterdam. And it’s next level, 50,000 and they’re hard-core. It’s a proper, proper atmosphere.
“And I was like, ‘No, you’re right’. That was it, I went and said thanks. I was just training but the offer was as number three but maybe, if Mignolet wasn’t happy with Karius playing, then it would have turned into number two.
“But back at the point I wasn’t happy with the year before that. Potentially (I’d have signed). In my career there was a lot of sliding doors and that was one of them.”
Liverpool ended up signing veteran Manninger to be their third-choice goalkeeper instead after Karius broke a bone in his hand in pre-season, with Mignolet starting the 2016/17 season as Klopp’s first-choice goalkeeper.
Jones would go on to make 84 appearances in two seasons with Feyenoord, winning the Eredivisie title in his first campaign before lifting the KNVB Cup in his second year.
He then joined Saudi side Al-Nassr in 2018 and won the Saudi Pro League in 2018/19, before finishing career back in his native Australia with Perth Glory.
