It’ll be the Reds’ first competitive outing since March 11 following the suspension of the Premier League and other competitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After several weeks of remote sessions drawn up by the club’s medical and fitness teams, the squad were able to return to Melwood to begin a phased return to training last month.
Liverpool have also contested two inter-squad matches at Anfield, as well as recording a 6-0 friendly victory over Blackburn Rovers.
And as Sunday’s Merseyside derby edges ever nearer, Klopp feels the Reds – as well as their opponents, Everton – will be in ‘very good shape’, despite the gap between matches.
Read on for what the manager told his pre-match press conference on Friday afternoon…
On whether Liverpool will be fit and ready to go on Sunday…
Yeah, so in nine weeks without doing anything you can lose pretty much everything – you only have to try it yourself! When you were good at something and then you don’t do it for nine weeks, or don’t do anything for nine weeks, it looks different afterwards. The players trained every day, but it’s not about that; we don’t train them for a specific moment in this period because we had never an idea until maybe a week before we were allowed to start again with training, we didn’t know at all when we will start again and that made it quite tricky. Training is completely different if you just want to keep fit or if you want to be in your best shape on a specific day. It’s just sports science and nothing else. We kept them fit until we knew and now we will go again. As I said, that was probably around about a week before we then started training out there on the pitch. You can lose a lot, but the boys don’t lose a lot in [terms of] problems fitness-wise. In football we have the problem where it’s unfortunately not like riding a bike, where we say in Germany ‘you never lose it’ because you did it once and you will be able to ride a bike until your last day in life.
That’s not [the same] with football because we have to bring in 11 or more players together having the same idea in the same moment. These kind of things you have to train, you have to train them even in a normal week – if we play Sunday-Sunday or Saturday-Saturday, you have to train it and that’s what we do. You have to train it even more so after a longer break and that’s what we were working on, it looked really good, a lot of things were still there, but timing and stuff like this always needs to be adjusted and that’s what we did. I expect us to be in a good shape but we will see how good it is. I expect, like I always do, Everton to be in a very good shape and so it will be difficult for us – and rightly so, it’s Premier League. We didn’t play for a while, so we should try to sort the problems in this game, we should give them some as well and then we will see.
On the positive mentality displayed by his players during lockdown…
First and foremost, I would estimate that other teams did things as well – I don’t know exactly, I didn’t watch that – but I was not surprised by my team, to be honest. That we are in the situation we are in the table, or performance-wise in the last couple of years, is only because of the boys, the togetherness of the group and the character of the individuals. I am not surprised about that; it was just like it always was. The boys, we didn’t have to tell them to stay in contact, they wanted to stay in contact. That’s a massive difference. We organised it a little bit with some things; we gave them some opportunities to be together, training sessions especially. The boys did a lot of yoga – the Zoom sessions were a lot of times yoga – and all these things and it was all absolutely nice, which was good for the mood. You could see when we met the first time on Zoom after a week or so, I am not 100 per cent sure, everybody was like, ‘Finally I see him again, him again and him again…’ and that all helps and that’s what we wanted to do. On the Friday before lockdown, I told the boys we would create a WhatsApp group – a chat group – and I wanted really everybody to use it as an opportunity for us. The boys write to each other and stuff like this and there are no secrets – if we write to each other, it is for all of us. That’s what we did and it was really lively over the whole time. So, yes, I was really happy with what they did during [lockdown] and now since we are back.
Look, if you are a little bit silly you can come in here every day and think, ‘Wow, that was better before, when we could use our canteen, when we could use this, when we could use that…’ but now it is all different and it is exciting if you want to see it like this, it’s like a little bit adventurous as well! I never thought we would go back to having the gym in a tent, to be honest! How our people organised it – what Ray Haughan did was incredible, what Andreas Kornmayer did from a fitness point of view was incredible, what Mona Nemmer did from a nutrition point of view was incredible during lockdown, but now as well because the situation is like it is. We cannot just go out for grocery shopping; we should be able to, but in a situation like this it is not easy to do these kind of things when everybody tells you have to be safe. For us, it would be a massive problem if one of our boys got infected and it stays like this, so we have to make sure we can really keep them in a safe place as much as possible. That’s what we did and the boys let it happen. The boys use it without thinking, without taking it for granted, and that shows again the character of the team. Again, I am not surprised because I know how blessed I am with this group.
On whether he is ‘concerned’ by the prospect of his players picking up injuries after such a long break…
Yes, concerned, like I always am, not different. I am always concerned about injuries because that’s the thing you want to avoid; you want to have all the players fit and available, you want to have the choice, you want to have the situation that you have to make difficult decisions and stuff like this. We tried to make sure the boys were as fit as possible. If I thought it was no chance that after four weeks we play the rest of the season, I would have said it. I am not [thinking this] but it doesn’t mean nothing can happen. For example, the injuries from Arsenal and Garcia from City had nothing to do with the short pre-season or anything else – these things that can happen always, it is a contact sport. You don’t want to have this, but it can happen. So, yes, I am concerned but not in a manner that I think we should not play. No, not at all. I think we had before the end nine or 10 weeks – I’m not sure how long our lockdown without training was – but the boys trained there. They were not sitting on a chair for nine weeks. Then we trained with them again for four weeks and they were really active, they had to be active. [They are] young sportspeople, so I think all we all – not only us, we all – will be fine.
On the ability to make five substitutions in the remaining games of the season…
Five subs is a necessity, to be honest. I am really sure and really happy that I think pretty much all agreed on that. I heard at the beginning when people spoke about that that maybe the clubs near the bottom said it will be an advantage for the bigger teams and stuff like this. I didn’t see it one second like this because it is all about the players once again, that we can come through this period. We will have now two games in three days, then we have an eight-day break, which is not so cool but not to change, and then we will play four games in nine days. If you cannot make changes then in the games and try to figure out who can play how long in which moment – and I hope we have the players for that – then it would be really, really difficult. So I like that opportunity to do so, but of course it is just necessary, honestly, nothing else. I am really happy that we all agreed on that.