Crystal Palace 0-7 Liverpool: Jürgen Klopp's reaction
Jürgen Klopp saluted ‘one of the better days in our lives’ as Liverpool recorded a resounding 7-0 win over Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Saturday.
The Reds moved six points clear at the top of the Premier League table and ensured they’d be sitting at the summit on Christmas Day as they hit top gear in London.
Takumi Minamino set them on their way inside three minutes when he swept in a first league goal for the champions.
Sublime strikes from Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino followed before the interval, though Palace created a handful of opportunities which they were unable to capitalise on.
Liverpool showed no let-up after the break as Jordan Henderson rasped in a fourth before Firmino clinically added goal number five.
Mohamed Salah came off the bench to round off the scoring with a close-range header followed by a magnificent curling effort to make it seven.
Afterwards, Klopp paid tribute to his team’s display but insisted the Reds will immediately be switching focus to next weekend’s fixture with West Bromwich Albion at Anfield.
Read on for a summary of his post-match press conference at Selhurst Park...
Palace 0-7 Liverpool: Watch highlights now
On what was the most pleasing aspect of the afternoon for him…
Everything is pleasing; everything is good about this game. Overcoming the difficult problems in the first half with [their] counter-attacks, fighting really hard to avoid a goal there and then on the other side, really top football, top finishing. Keeping the ball in the right way, using the positioning, filling the match plan with life. The boys did really well, it was really difficult to play against us today, I would say. And then today they obviously all wore their finishing boots it looked like and when you have that it is really tricky. That's the reason for the result. That didn’t happen for us before and unfortunately it will not happen a lot, but it’s a funny season – we lost 7-2 and now we won 7-0, so at least we could cancel out a little bit the goal difference.
On how satisfied he is with Liverpool’s title defence so far…
I don't feel satisfaction or whatever. I am happy in the moment, absolutely, because it was just a top game, but it makes no sense to be over the moon about something but the challenges don't get smaller. For the first time now in what feels like ages we don't play Tuesday again. I think Crystal Palace felt today a little bit how hard it is to play Wednesday and then Saturday 12.30pm immediately again – it is tough and it was tough for us as well. I don’t think really about being top of the table or whatever, we are just happy we won the game and now we have more time to recover than we ever had before in this season. We have to use that in a smart way and then West Brom is waiting for us with Sam Allardyce in the next proper challenge.
On whether he feels Liverpool have hit a rhythm with a 'more settled team' following injuries…
We dealt the whole season already only with the circumstances – with the injuries and stuff like this, you cannot prepare, you just have to sort these kind of problems. We all know, we had a lot of problems and when one started it just leads to the next problem and that means you have a player less at centre-half and then another one has to play seven times in a row because nobody else was fit and the young kids were not ready and all these kind of things. It doesn’t stop. In the moment, it's just one hour after the game where we think it's fine – but from tomorrow on we try to prepare for all the different scenarios again and do what we have to do to make sure we will win football games in the end of December. It's just tough and nothing to be satisfied or whatever.
On whether he ideally wants to use Minamino up front rather than in midfield...
First and foremost, we want to use Taki, so that's it. The way we play, if you play for us in midfield, you need to have offensive skills as well. So that means Taki can play there, played twice, played good. More importantly, in training he looked really sharp, really in a good shape – that's why he played today. He played a top game today, nice finish and just is in a good moment. That's what we want to use. I saw him in the dressing room now and he couldn't avoid smiling all over his face. It's a good moment. He's in a really good place and helps us a lot.
On his thinking behind not starting Salah...
It's just the first time for a while that we have the opportunity to do something like this. We played Sunday-Wednesday, so we needed fresh legs today. So Joel could come in, Naby could come in and then we had to think about how we can deal with that in the first line and Mo played the last four games, so a massively intense period. So it was clear it will be him. Then usually you would expect in a game like this against Crystal Palace – the result recents between us and them were always pretty tight – so bringing him in the last half an hour, I thought it's a good idea. We did that, by the way, but it was not exactly the scenario we would have expected, of course. That's it.
On whether it was one of those days where 'everything worked'...
How I said, it was a good day. The counter-attacks they had, we defend that. As far as [I know], nobody picked up any injuries or not little or bigger ones. I hope that's still the case when I arrive again in the dressing room. From that, really one of the better days in our lives and we will take that with us, try to recover and go again.
On how much more he feels there is to come from his side...
I don't think that we have to make this kind of prediction – how much more will come after a 7-0. If you want to reach whatever in this league or in football in general, you have to be really consistent. For being consistent, you need options. Jose Mourinho said before our game we played against Tottenham that only two or three players are not involved and all the rest is on the pitch from our game from, I don't know, the league winners. He was actually right, the problem is only that these players had to play 80, 90 per cent of the games in the season, so that's more our problem. So far, we always could bring a really good team on the pitch. That's why we fill up with really sensational boys, that really helps. But the majority of the season is still to come, so it's not about how much more we can do. We just have to be ready on each matchday to find a way to win this specific game. That's not decided if we will do that. We will try it with all we have but we will see later on this season.