Jürgen Klopp on Thiago progress, perspective and Newcastle
Jürgen Klopp has provided an update on the progress Thiago Alcantara is making with his recovery from a knee injury.
Thiago made his 'first steps' towards team training in the build-up to Sunday's draw with West Bromwich Albion as Liverpool continue to adopt a cautious approach.
The Reds now face a trip to St. James' Park on Wednesday evening to play Newcastle United and Klopp discussed the fitness of his No.6 when looking ahead to that encounter.
Read on for a summary of the boss' pre-match comments, which were delivered during a chat with the media on Sunday...
On how far away Thiago is from returning and whether he has any chance for Newcastle...
No, Thiago did parts of training so far, was in… today is Sunday, so on Friday he trained the full session but the session was a reduced session, so he could do that. He has to be part of team training, it's not about training one day with the team and then you can play football in the Premier League again. It looks quite promising in the moment but I cannot say more about it, to be honest. I don't know. I think the plan was that he trains tomorrow [Monday] completely normal but we will see that.
On whether it's important to keep perspective after the draw with West Brom…
That's always important in life. I want to win more than anything else but I had to learn so early in my life that it still doesn't happen all the time. And that's completely fine. I like winning football games and especially when you deserve winning. For deserving to win tonight, I thought we should have done more – more right things, it's not that we didn't invest, we ran a lot, we fought a lot. That's all OK, but to do more of the right stuff. That's what I told the boys already. I'm not angry with them, it just can happen. We will learn off that again and then we will play football again.
On being confident about Liverpool learning lessons from the West Brom draw when they face Newcastle…
I'm not sure it has something to do with confidence, it's about experience. So far we did it. The boys, that's a top group and they were a top group after winning 7-0 and they are a top group after drawing against West Brom. That's how it is – that doesn't change. Maybe in the perspective from outside that changed, I can imagine that's immediately like this. But I'm now not a young manager anymore and I can judge these things in the right way. We are not happy about it, we are actually the opposite, but now it's over. We cannot change that anymore, we just can make sure that in exactly the same situation it doesn't happen exactly the same again. But I don't know yet how the Newcastle game will be; sorry, but the analysis is still to come tomorrow morning [Monday], then I know probably what we have to do there.
On Steve Bruce being hopeful forward Callum Wilson will be available…
We expect him to play then. He is a good striker but, actually, they have a couple of really good players. That's it. We have to be ready for that. Sorry, we can do the press conference here but I can't now go in the detail for the Newcastle game. It will be another tough challenge, like all Newcastle games always have been. We have three days, let's make sure we are ready.