Jürgen Klopp: We want to make the best season of it from now
Jürgen Klopp has outlined Liverpool's desire to make the best they possibly can of the remainder of the 2020-21 season.
The Reds travel to Leicester City on Saturday afternoon sitting fourth in the Premier League and with the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie against RB Leipzig to follow next week.
During the second part of his pre-Leicester press conference, Klopp discussed his team’s objectives between now and May and the situation in the league table.
The boss was also asked about the circumstances of the clash with Leipzig – with the first leg to be played in Budapest rather than Germany – and his early impressions of new arrivals Ozan Kabak and Ben Davies.
Read his answers below…
On how confidence and belief within his team will come back…
With playing football. Again, you saw the game [against Manchester City] and we talk about it like the players had absolutely no confidence or whatever. There are different levels of confidence. The confidence, you get with results in a row. So, one game, you win it and it gives you a little bit of confidence but if you don’t know exactly why you won it, the next game will teach you differently. How I said, it’s only five or six days ago that we were very confident, very calm and lost the game, I know. But the football we played around the goals we conceded was really, really good. And you can only play this kind of football when you are confident. So we don’t have an issue where I now talk every day about being even more confident or whatever. The boys know who they are, the boys know how good they are, that’s all clear. But to feel it 100 per cent, you have to perform on the pitch – and that’s what we do, in training and in the games.
On European fixtures being moved to alternative venues and whether it will affect the players or he has any worries about it…
No, not really. It’s again something we cannot change and we have no influence on that at all. We just wait for the moment when somebody tells us where we have to play. In this case now, it’s UEFA. I think the flight to Hungary is obviously longer than to Germany. But especially for the first game, it’s maybe an hour difference, I don’t know exactly. That’s the difference but not the main difference, to be honest; Leipzig have to fly there as well. Where we play the second game, yes, I don’t know yet, it depends on a few decisions; we are again not involved in them. We will see that. That’s two games around all the other games, I don’t think it makes a massive difference. It would be much nicer if we would be allowed to play at Leipzig and, especially, allowed to play at Anfield. But it’s not in our hands, so I didn’t really think about it. We just accepted the decision and prepare the game – after the Leicester game.
On the reasons for the tight gaps between teams in the top half of the table…
First and foremost, we said from the beginning it will be the most intense season of all times. Not sure, that’s why we tried to make a few decisions, which obviously didn’t go through. It’s for different reasons, for us especially it’s a lot of injuries, stuff like this, in the wrong moment. But still even more games than in the years before, so that doesn’t help. Some players have to play too much and get injured as well, and all these kind of things. I don’t know exactly the problems of other teams but it’s a really special season, it’s a full season without a crowd. It’s a season where teams who maybe usually get affected by the away crowd or affected even by their own home crowd – if they are in a relegation battle and people are not happy with what they are seeing, it affects as well. That all can be. But other people have to assess that properly and then maybe I will read the article or the report about it.
For us, it’s just the season we are in. I knew before we started it would be a really tough one, I’m pretty sure everybody knew it. The numbers of injuries are really high and all these kinds of things, that was always clear. To be really successful in a year you have to be lucky as well. If you are not lucky then you have a problem and when you have a problem you have to sort it. But it will not be the perfect season anymore probably then. But it’s not about that. For us, we see it like this – we have 15 games to go still, so a lot of points and we will go for it. It’s not about where are the others or where will they end up and they end up, it’s just about us. We try our absolute best to make the best season from now on of it. That’s our job.
On the clash with Leicester being his 300th game as LFC manager and the success he has achieved during that period…
First and foremost, it doesn’t feel like this in the moment I can tell you, and it’s not really important. That’s, again, something when I’m not here anymore I will think about the time I had here – not in the moment. I know my job is the present and the future, not the past. So, game No.300 is very important for me. Games No.1 to 299, not a little bit in this moment. We know we are not completely clueless or whatever when we talk about football, but we know we have to be successful in the future, and that’s what we try. I don’t get the noise around the results, to be honest, whatever you wrote I didn’t read it! But I know what the situation is and I talk about the results in general. Even when I know the reason why we are not flying, I expect us to win more football games than we did, to be honest. That’s what I’m concerned about, that’s it.
On his early impressions of Kabak since he joined on loan…
Yeah, calm person. So, both Ben [Davies] and Ozan are calm people, willing to learn, great attitude. They really throw themselves in everything that is ahead of them, what a defender should do. Making big steps, adapting to the way we play, that’s important. We have still a clear way to defend, which is important, because if both of them would be on the pitch then there are still nine players who are used to what we did before, so if the two players would do something differently that would lead to a strange situation. Yeah, it’s all good so far. Now we have to make decisions. We have to change again because of Fab, and now we will see which solution we will take.