The Liverpool boss previewed the fifth-round trip to Stamford Bridge at a press conference on Monday afternoon. Read a summary of his answers below...
On whether Saturday’s defeat has changed his selection plans…
No, the defeat has absolutely nothing to do with the line-up for tomorrow night. But the line-up will be shown tomorrow night and not now and here – we have no clue what Chelsea is doing, so why should Chelsea know what we are doing? That’s it, pretty much. We always played the team who gave us the best opportunity to go to the next round [and] that was for different reasons: the physical demands of a season, when are the games, how are the boys in that moment, fitness levels and stuff like this, injuries, coming back from injuries. It was always like this – yes, with the little exception of the last replay against Shrewsbury, how we all know. Apart from that it was always the same and it will be like this as well.
On the impact Jordan Henderson’s absence has on the team…
He wasn’t absent, he was in the dressing room but just didn’t play, like Millie was. I really love how finally Hendo gets all the recognition he would have deserved maybe earlier, but Hendo’s absence or Millie’s absence was not the reason for losing against Watford. It’s never like this and it will hopefully never be like that, we had enough very good players on the pitch and we didn’t deliver, that’s how it is. We are not blind, we saw that. But yeah, Hendo’s very, very important of course.
On how he sees his side’s rhythm at the moment…
All good. Look, there are so many explanations for the defeat and it’s nice that finally you have some questions because it was probably boring over the time to always speak about the same thing! But I cannot now deliver just interesting answers. It’s not about the rhythm, it’s not about that. We didn’t play well, that’s the truth and Watford hurt us in moments and situations where we are usually much better. So, it was a throw-in, fight for the first ball, cannot block the cross, are not in the right position for the guy who is finishing it off in the end: three or four mistakes in a row, that can lead to goals, it has nothing to do with rhythm. The next goal we concede in a situation where I think at least one if not two players of us thought the ball was out. It’s about mindset in these moments, how is your concentration level, how ready you are and we saw that for ourselves. It was not the day where we showed our best attitude-wise [and] apart from that it was anyway a very difficult game because Watford defended in a 6-3-1 formation, which is of course allowed, but quite a challenge to play against. But if you want to play against it then you have to play different than we did.
I really thought in the beginning of the second half that finally we got it, it took a while but finally we got it, but then we conceded the first goal and then we concede a second goal. It’s not game over but it’s not that you can build on a few good situations in the beginning of the second half. That’s it, nothing to do with rhythm. But, the situation we are in, if you want to read a book about how to deal with the situation you couldn’t because nobody else was in this situation before us. The boys didn’t lose for 44 games in the Premier League. The Premier League game we lost before Watford at Man City, it was because of 11 millimetres. Imagine if we wouldn’t have lost that game, it would have been a run of more than 60 games, which is absolutely incredible. It’s incredible. I know that we didn’t play the stars from the sky against West Ham but that’s not possible [when you have] played four times in a row against teams who either fight for the league with all they have or against Atletico; if you like, a team who was not in the best moment in the league but plays a home game in a really interesting approach – really defensive orientated formation-wise. That's the most difficult thing in football, it’s nothing to do with rhythm.
Could we have done better? Of course, but it’s not about now picking out the Watford game [and saying] ‘That was the sign that something went wrong’. It’s not like this and we have the chance to react and that’s how it is. The longer you are in a situation like this, the biggest challenge these boys face constantly, everybody is fighting for everything and we fight with questions we get asked about ‘Is it over yet? When will you do it?’ and stuff like this. It’s not that we are really bothered about it, it’s just the situation. That is over now, that’s good, so we can concentrate again completely on football and we all do that. It didn’t distract us or whatever, it’s just the situation. Nobody can tell us how to deal in the best way with runs like this because not a lot of teams had it, that’s all I can say. I was not happy with the performance but it was always clear that there will be a moment where it can happen and now it happened. That’s how it is, nothing else.
On whether Tuesday’s game offers a release of pressure with it being in a different competition…
We never really think about ‘lesser pressure’ or whatever – we are Liverpool, we are always under pressure, we always have to deliver. We play away at Chelsea and everybody expects us to win there, which is difficult, it was always difficult and will always be difficult. So, that’s the situation. There’s for sure no favourite in this game and if then it is Chelsea because they play at home, if you look at the squad, if they make changes – I don’t know if Frank is doing that – then it’s still a very, very experienced team. We saw their line-ups when we did the analysis yesterday, I saw that they made eight or nine changes in the games but when you look at the team, they were playing Pedro, Giroud and Willian – wow, that’s a nice second formation, if you want! We don’t really think about it, it’s not more pressure or less pressure than before, it’s just the last 16 of the FA Cup and we want to go through. That’s the plan and that’s what hopefully everybody can see.
On whether he feels ‘loyalty’ to the players who have previously featured in the FA Cup this season…
It’s not about loyalty, these boys are our boys and they did what they did. If we would win the FA Cup in the end, they would be involved in all the celebrations. If they will play tomorrow night, I don’t know, we will see that. For sure, not all of them. From the Shrewsbury team, for sure there will be boys in the squad and who will start. We will see. It’s a different situation like it was in the last round. The team who played Shrewsbury at Shrewsbury, that was actually an FA Cup team for us in that moment which we thought would make sense. We couldn’t get the result we wanted, that’s why we had to play a second time. It will not be exactly the team who played the second time against Shrewsbury.
On what has made it tough for Liverpool to break down the likes of Atletico Madrid and Watford…
The quality of Atletico, for example. How they did it. It’s a world-class team, then you play against them and they set up like this – that’s the biggest challenge in football. Just football things; play the balls in the right spaces, overplay the last line in the right moment, not only for example with long balls from the last line but from half-spaces. The first goal City scored yesterday against Aston Villa is a perfect example how you have to play against a team like this. It’s a chip ball from I think 20 yards for Foden, who is sprinting in behind the last line and heads the ball back to Aguero. You need to have much more of these situations, just football situations. We had these moments, we scored in similar situations. For example, the Norwich goal was a ball in behind the line, it was a different situation but we had these moments a lot of times. That’s what we have to do.
I can ask every week for the perfect solutions but the boys have to deliver then and because we are all – and they are especially – human beings, it’s not that easy. They did it so often so well. We don’t lie to ourselves, it’s not that we said it was clear it would happen and then we don’t care how it happened. No, we made a meeting about that game, showed the situations where we could have done better and now we have to make sure we do it better if there are similar situations.
I would guess that the game tomorrow night will be different. Chelsea are a football-playing side, from a passing point of view one of the top, top, top sides in the league for sure. We have to find a solution for that, first and foremost. It will be a completely different challenge. Chelsea build up the game pretty much constantly; if they don’t do it against us, I wouldn’t imagine that in the moment. We need to defend them really well and there will be different spaces. We spoke about it three years ago, how to play against deep blocks. We improved a lot in that and now in these games when you don’t win them, that’s the reason why. That’s the reason why other teams didn’t win football games where everybody expected them to win it, because you have to do the right things again and again and again – and we didn’t do it often enough.
On whether this tie takes on more significance following the defeat at Watford…
Yes, you don’t want to lose football games. Do we want to win the game more because we lost the last one? I don’t know. We want to win football games constantly. More important? I don’t know. It’s very important, the most important game we have because it’s the only one we play. It’s the FA Cup and we have only one chance. We have to win it if we want to go through, whichever way we use to do so. That’s what we have to make sure. It will be really difficult. It will not be easier for us because we lost the last game and now we have extra motivation or whatever. Chelsea have plenty of reasons why they want to go through, so it will be a tough one. It’s the FA Cup and two big teams play against each other, it will be interesting.
On the job Frank Lampard is doing at Chelsea…
Super job, whatever I could see. I like the project a lot. I’m not sure, maybe because of the transfer ban it was not really planned but having this amount of sensational young players is really nice. They are all ready to play in the Premier League obviously and they did well so far. But the fight for the Champions League means you have to beat at least three or four teams with similar circumstances, similar opportunities, possibilities and stuff like this. That’s a really long season, a really demanding season – with playing Champions League and all that stuff. So, that’s not so easy. But the way they go looks really promising and Frank is doing an incredible job. For all managers, especially Frank as a very successful player, to deal with defeats is the biggest challenge for all of us. But I thought so far they did really brilliantly.
On the difficulty for players who come into the side…
It was a massive challenge for Dejan [Lovren] to play against Troy Deeney; so many other centre-halves in the world would struggle in these specific situations. Joe [Gomez] had problems in similar situations before that everybody probably forgets in that moment, that’s how it is. But losing the first ball is never the problem in these situations because Troy cannot score from there – where he picks up the balls from [Ben] Foster or whatever. It’s all about the formation around that, picking him up. I don’t remember a lot of situations where they then had immediately a chance after that. It was the fight for the throw-in, that’s one situation but we could have avoided that goal in two other situations on top of that.
Both Dejan and Joel [Matip] played for us in this position sensational games. But like everybody in life, you need to be healthy. Then you have to get fit and when you are fit you need rhythm. That’s the most difficult thing to get in professional football because if you are out you have sessions but you don’t play that often. He’s an outstanding centre-half. Oxlade replaced Hendo; Oxlade is a super player. If you can tell me one player on Saturday who played his normal level, I would be really surprised. It’s not because two boys played who didn’t play a week or two before, it’s absolutely nothing to do [with that].