Goals from Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Daniel Sturridge ensured Klopp’s rampant Reds signed off ahead of the international break with a resounding victory - their fourth win in a row in all competitions.
Read on for a transcript from the boss’ post-match press conference…
On his overall reaction to Liverpool’s display…
So far this season we have learned from each performance and from each game we’ve played, different things. Watford was not as bad as people wanted to see it because it is not easy to win there and we were close to winning, but we defended the last few minutes too deep because we wanted to save the result. We did this already better in the Hoffenheim away game against an outstandingly strong side. Then we built on this again against Crystal Palace; yes, we could not score a lot of goals, but the decisive goal also counts.
We then played an outstanding game against Hoffenheim and then today was the next step and we did it again. That probably was the biggest challenge for us today. We need to learn that we can do things like this every three or four days because otherwise will we have a problem during the season. We wanted to show it today, we wanted to prove to ourselves, we wanted to be spot on from the first second, we wanted to show our desire, we wanted to show our greed and we wanted to show our ambitions against a very strong side. You never know if you then can win the game, but we didn’t think about winning the game, more about the performance. The performance was perfect and the result is a result of the performance.
On Joe Gomez’s display…
Good. Very important for us. I saw today from the start 11 outstandingly good individual performances. Even Daniel came on and had his input. Also Millie, very, very important and Marko did the job, so that’s cool. We need this of course. Joe needed time to come back in this shape. He knows it best, he is young, he is not a lot older than Trent – who could have played again, by the way, but because we have the option we can give him a rest in this case. Joe was nice to watch, really, really strong. Really mature. I said after the game ‘Welcome to adult football’ because that was 100 per cent adult football, really strong challenges without no ugly challenges, just hard and a real physical presence. It was good.
On performing so well in the absence of key players…
I was never like this, or thought like this – what we are doing has it be independent from players. If you miss too many then they have no chance, nobody can do the same. But we never thought about who we miss even when we know how big the problems are when you don’t have these quality players involved. I am not pleased about it, actually I expected it. It’s the job we have to do; you will never hear an excuse that we couldn’t deliver because of this or that. It’s intense, it’s all intense and we all know we cannot line up the same 11 players for five or six months, so we need to have opportunities to change different positions. Today we decided for rhythm and confidence. I really thought a lot about the line-up and who we could change, and we would have had opportunities to do it, but they all looked so positive after the Hoffenheim game in training that I thought ‘Come on, let’s try again’. And obviously it worked.
On resting Simon Mignolet…
Intensity for a goalkeeper is different. It’s not a physical intensity, it’s a mental intensity. We created a situation before the season where we said we wanted to have three really strong goalkeepers, that’s our situation now. That means you cannot deal with it ike you do when you have a clear No.3, a clear No.2 - yes, Simon is a clear No.1, but the others are not clear No.2s and No.3s, they are really strong goalkeepers.
Simon did outstandingly good so far [this season] and he won the race in pre-season, if you want. He’s a machine, he’s always there, he’s solid, really, really reliable and the others had some little problems with injuries and stuff like this, so he won the race. I told Si yesterday and it was not that he gave me a hug and said ‘thank you, boss, that’s exactly what I thought we should do’, but I wanted to do it and I want to give him this rest and I want to have Loris in this game in goal.
He had a lot of good things, he played really cool football, yes sometimes a little bit too cool and waited a little bit too long but obviously you could hear in the stadium that we all need to learn and get used to playing football in close situations. They [the crowd] are all a little bit surprised but the players should not be because of orientation. You need to play in close spaces as a goalkeeper and as an outfield player. He did a good job today, I’m happy about this.
On who will play in goal against Manchester City after the international break…
100 per cent if nothing happens Simon will play against City.
On whether he expects to be busy in the final few days of the transfer window…
We will see ... with no games, I hope you can enjoy the next five or six days with all the rumours around and all that stuff. I’m not looking forward to it, but it’s part of the game.