The Reds switch back to Premier League duties on Saturday as they host Aston Villa in a 3pm BST kick-off at Anfield, when they’ll aim to secure three more points in their quest for a top-four finish.
Read more from the manager ahead of the game below…
On whether he’ll show the players clips from the 7-2 defeat against Villa earlier in the season ahead of this game…
Definitely not. We watched these goals again after the game. We spoke [about] why the things happened that night. Since then, everything changed – everything. So it makes no sense to go back and talk about these things. It’s the normal football things so it doesn’t help to watch the goals again. If it would help, I would be the first who shows them. But that wouldn’t help, so we have to think about different things. Sometimes you have to show bad things to make the boys, or people in general, remember some things. I don’t think I did that very often in my life but it might be right sometimes. But I’m 100 per cent sure this time it’s not right and I hope nobody would do it to you! If you have your worst performance for a long, long time and half a year later somebody comes around the corner in a similar situation and [says], ‘By the way, don’t do that again’ – I hope nobody does that to you.
On whether he’d be inclined to bring Naby Keita back into the team as soon as possible after his substitution on Tuesday night…
I spoke to him, so that’s all set. For who we will line up tomorrow, it’s nothing to do with that. Yes, maybe it’s right or not. If it’s possible, we will see. But that’s it pretty much. I spoke to Naby.
On Mane’s form and if his schedule in recent years is ‘catching up with him’…
We all know how good Sadio Mane is, what a player he is. And what he did for us. Obviously the numbers, scoring-wise now, are obviously not great in the moment – he knows that. It’s always for a player and for a player with the mindset of Sadio, he wants to do extremely well then in these moments and that’s the situation he is in. Each striker in the world knows these kinds of situations. But I’m not concerned, but I see it as well. That’s clear. We work on it – that’s the only answer I can give. The schedule of the last three years was for a lot of players in world football a tough one – for him as well, that’s true. But I don’t think that’s the reason, there’s no physical problem for Sadio, not a real one. We all need breaks from time to time, that’s clear, but it’s not a general problem or whatever. It’s just a situation. If you don’t score for a while then strikers start thinking and there is a moment when you start thinking exactly the right things again and then it will be fine again. We have to make sure this time is not too far away.
On the reasons for Liverpool’s home results and needing back-to-back wins at Anfield now…
Yeah, and a win at Leeds then as well, which is the next one coming up. But one of the main reasons is there is no crowd in, there’s no doubt about that. A lot of teams have that problem. Apart from that, the reason why we didn’t win home games was we didn’t play well enough. Not in all of them – there were some home games when we lost where I thought in other times, even without a crowd, we would or should have won this game, for sure. But we didn’t, that’s true. And now we have a losing streak of six home games in a row – wow, that’s long. We have to change that, but how can I change that in training or whatever? We have to bring ourselves into the right mindset.
We decided – and it didn’t look it in the Madrid game – but before that already, the other games when we won now three games in a row, we decided we chase everybody in this league. Ahead of us, behind us, who cares? We want to squeeze out of this season whatever we can get. And the game three days ago was not a good thing to do but it happened. Now we have the chance to do it better and that’s exactly what we have to do tomorrow. That’s how it is. [For a] long time nobody could really explain why we were so strong at home, at least result-wise. Now this is not easy to explain. But the main reason why we are not exactly the same, or were not exactly the same, is we miss our supporters. That’s how it is. But [it’s] not to change. We played very good games without supporters at home and that’s what we have to do now.