The Reds had to settle for a point at a snowy Anfield after Foxes defender Harry Maguire cancelled out Sadio Mane’s third-minute breakthrough.
Klopp’s men nevertheless extended their lead at the top of the Premier League to five, though the manager reiterated his philosophy of not becoming distracted by the table.
Read a summary of his post-match press conference below…
On the game…
I don’t see it like this, that we dropped points. We take what we get – tonight it’s a point and that’s more than we had before the game, so that’s fine. Am I overly happy? No, of course not, we wanted to win the game, but we knew before it would be really difficult and then it started snowing and that made it no easier. The snow is actually not a problem, the only problem is if it stays on the pitch and that was actually the case. You saw that the ball didn’t roll, really, and if you then have the ball pretty much for 70 or 80 per cent of the time then it makes life really uncomfortable.
Still, we scored a fantastic goal, because in the last third it was possible with the way Leicester defend that we [could] play in between the lines, which is what we did around the first goal. Immediately we had similar situations where we didn’t get the last ball or the last pass was not perfect, but we had these situations. But to break down a side who defend like Leicester did you have to accelerate and to speed up in decisive areas. Sometimes we didn’t do it, I don’t know exactly why, and sometimes we couldn’t do it because it was difficult; you have to control the ball and pass through a really compact defending formation. That’s why we had not many more situations in the first half and then we gave a goal away. There was one minute to play and if we start a counter-attack or keep the ball then everything is fine. But life is like this – you have to pay for your mistakes most of the time, and football is for sure like that, not always but sometimes. In this case we gave a free-kick away. We defended the first and defended the second, but the third one, Chilwell was obviously awake and wanted to bring the ball back and Maguire could finish it off.
It didn’t feel brilliant but it’s not the first time in our lives we had 1-1 at half-time. We tried to do a few good things again in the second half and improve a few other things. It was a much more open game then in the second half because Leicester were more confident and changed a few things; they had the ball more often, so we had to defend, we had to run, they had their situations and chances, especially after set-pieces. They had chances and so 1-1 is absolutely OK.
I think everybody agrees that there could have been a penalty and maybe should have been a penalty. I don’t know why it was no penalty. And then we had the situation with Maguire [fouling Mane]. It’s the second time in a game where a striker from my team, somebody brings him down at the halfway line and we treat it like it is I don’t know where. He would not have been alone through because Mo Salah would have been around him – it’s a two vs Schmeichel situation, if that’s not a real chance, a real goalscoring situation, then I don’t know. But, again, Leicester had chances and they had nothing to do with the situation around that – it’s a ref thing. We now have to accept the result, which is no problem because we don’t think we run through the league and beat everybody. We were ready for hard work. In a difficult game on a difficult pitch we got a point – not perfect but still good enough.
On whether he is disappointed not to have extended the gap at the top of the table after Manchester City lost to Newcastle United on Tuesday night…
Am I disappointed after we don’t win a game? Of course I am. I don’t bring it too much together with the Man City game. I understand all these thoughts, but what shall we do now? What do you think when you ask? It is really easy to ask all these questions, but we have to make sure that we are not too much influenced by all these things. The boys are normal human beings, I am absolutely a normal human being. We wanted to win a football game, we didn’t win it and so we don’t feel brilliant. Afterwards, we have to talk about what does that mean for the Man City [result]? Not too much, to be honest. We have a point more than before – it is not exactly what we wanted to have, but still everything is fine. As I understand at the moment, I don’t think anybody further was injured, which obviously helps us a lot. Now we have a few days to prepare for West Ham and then we go again, then Bournemouth and we go again and all that stuff. That is what we will do, not counting points and hoping for gaps between us and other teams. We have to win our football games. That didn’t happen tonight and so we are not happy about that, but it’s not more.
On how he felt his players responded to the 11-day break they had before the match…
We spoke about that before the game, we didn’t have games in that time but the problem was that we had a lot of different things. Little injuries, because they didn’t take longer than 10 days, but they couldn’t train properly, then illness [for] two or three players, which doesn’t help as well. We don’t have a problem with the intensity of the game, we are fresh enough – we are as fresh as other teams. For us, I don’t feel a big advantage because we didn’t play but it would have been really hard for us if we would have played because we had really a lot of players struggling for training, so that makes it even more difficult to play a proper football game. From that point of view it was good, but it is not important anymore now. The other teams played these games and a few of them maybe, I don’t know, go into a final, or other teams don’t go into a final, but we will pretty much – apart from one game – have maybe the same number of games as other teams. When I came in here we had 64 games at the end of the season and played a final; I don’t remember that anybody asked ‘do you feel fresh?’ We have to deliver when the FA or whoever else wants us to play wherever, then we are there.
On Jordan Henderson being deployed at right-back…
It was [a] good [performance]. We had to find a solution. We thought about Rafa Camacho as well; he played there in training because Hendo couldn’t train the whole week. Then in the end, I made the decision for rather more defensive aspect and his experience in that position because they go for it on that side. Chilwell is usually really involved in the offensive play, overlapping constantly and stuff like that, so I didn’t want to give Rafa in his first game in that position such a big task. That’s why we decided on Hendo and he did really well, really well, and all good from that point of view.