Norwich 0-1 Liverpool: Jürgen Klopp's reaction
Jürgen Klopp was delighted with the improvements Liverpool made in the second half on Saturday to secure a hard-fought 1-0 victory at Norwich City.
The Reds moved 25 points clear at the top of the Premier League thanks to Sadio Mane's intervention off the bench.
The forward was introduced after an hour at Carrow Road and netted the only goal of the encounter 18 minutes later to see the Reds extend their lead at the summit.
Read on for a summary of Klopp's post-match press conference...
On Mane's influence on the game…
It helps when you have such quality on the bench to bring on. Sadio could have started today, of course, but I wanted to have a free decision for Tuesday actually. I don't think too often and too much about these games but when two players are back from injuries, like Sadio and Fabinho, you don't think they can play two games. [Don't think they] should play; can, yes, if you have to, but should play. And the quality of the other boys is just too big that you have to push somebody through. It was perfect for Sadio today to get a few minutes. It looked like he was ready, yes.
On what didn't go right for Liverpool in the first half…
It's easy to talk about the wind and stuff like this, but on the pitch the boys have to deal with it. We played, for sure, two or three or four long balls too many. The formation was not prepared for that so we were not there for the second balls and stuff like this. We didn't obviously feel that we can play the balls through the smaller gaps. That was the wind but it would be still right. The positioning was then not exactly like it should have been. For example, it was pretty obvious Trent's position in the first half was too often deep and wide instead of wide and high, which we changed, in this specific formation with 4-4-2 defending and Cantwell pretty much reacting on him like in a man-marking system. So, that gives so many different options then immediately.
Obviously our midfield was sometimes surprised by the long balls of our centre-halves and just couldn't push up early enough or quick enough, so we didn't win the second balls and all these kind of things. You need to get used to circumstances and after 45 minutes we knew how it feels. More information from us at half-time and we could improve, that was obviously much better then second half. We had so many counter-press situations where we won the ball back, where we put them under pressure, kept them under pressure and scored a wonderful goal. That's it.