Jürgen Klopp on Chelsea's set-up, Arsene Wenger visit and ambitions
Jürgen Klopp discussed Chelsea's tactical set-up and more during the second part of his pre-match press conference.
Liverpool face Thomas Tuchel's side at Anfield on Saturday evening, with both teams boasting a 100 per cent start to the 2021-22 Premier League campaign.
Read on as Klopp previewed the exciting encounter in a chat with reporters on Friday...
On whether Chelsea set up differently now after signing Romelu Lukaku...
Of course. Maybe the closest was when Giroud played up front but still then very different, but it's closer than when Werner played up front for Chelsea. Of course Romelu is a fixed point, so you can find him maybe on the wing in moments but it's not that he will be there the majority of the time. He really wants to keep the centre-halves in the centre, have these challenges, wants to have body contact, all these kind of things. Then you have this wild running and really skilled boys around in Mason Mount, probably Havertz – I'm not sure, they have obviously a lot of other options. Then you have the wing-backs, which most of the time, if not always, they use Reece James and Chilwell or Alonso on the left side. Two very, very good midfielders – is it Kante or Jorginho, or Kovacic and Jorginho, or whoever? So, that's the thing you can expect.
But, of course, if Romelu is playing then there's a different kind of player. If you let them cross, each ball in the box is immediately a major problem probably – how it was with Giroud as well. Romelu, when you saw the last game against Arsenal, the two goals they scored, one was a Reece James cross to him and you could see how Arsenal tried to defend it and how he got rid of the centre-half and then came in the box for a pretty easy goal. The other goal which Reece scored was then because the formation of Arsenal was really central, so he was completely free on the run inside the 18-yard box already. It's really not that easy because they are impressive in these kind of things. How it always is in football, if you don't want to have the problems there, you should avoid the passes to that area. That's what we obviously will try but if the ball is there, you have to defend it anyway.
On it being too simplistic to view it as Virgil van Dijk's job to stop Lukaku...
What Thomas Tuchel did there is really good. So it means that the way they build up, the way they play, it's a clear structure but very flexible. They have most of the time the wing-backs, or cover with the wing-backs, in the half spaces, like this double 10, double six, very flexible players. And now a proper target player up front. I think last year people very often spoke about that Chelsea played really well but didn't finish the situations off often enough, and it was obviously the idea behind the signing of Romelu, so smart business. But in the end the good thing about football is there is no football you cannot defend at all. It's more tricky, it's more difficult. Against us it's not too easy to defend, to be honest, but unfortunately possible as well. So, these are the different aspects.
Of course you can make whichever headline you want to write about Romelu and Virgil – he will show up around the other centre-half as well, I guess, and players! If you are only focused on Romelu, Kai and Mason will punish you. So that's the situation. It's a good football team, that's why they won the Champions League. We are a good football team and now let's play the game. You can imagine that we had enough time to train, to talk about it. Obviously today is another meeting with the boys [and] we can show them exactly – what we did already yesterday actually in training and the day before – what we want to do to cause them problems, because we should not ignore that fact that it's possible as well.
On Arsene Wenger's visit to the AXA Training Centre earlier this week...
Good, very good. I knew him before but he's a very nice guy, impressive person. But he was here as a FIFA representative, and we had time together but it was more that he showed me the things that FIFA wants to do, structure-wise, in the future. They wanted to know my opinion. There was no real time on top of that that I didn't write any questions down to ask him. I never did that, to be honest, not only with him, because I'm a big believer in you have to find your own way to deal with the specific problems over a day. We had a good laugh as well about similar problems he had to the problems I have now – he's not overly disappointed about not having these problems anymore. It was just a nice talk. How I said, he wanted to know my opinion about the FIFA plans.
On whether Liverpool will be facing a different Chelsea team confidence-wise after they won the Champions League last season...
I hope not but it's possible, of course. Last night they got pretty much all the prizes, right? They got most of the prizes, and that never harms the confidence, let me say it like that. What can I say? We meet them twice. Hopefully we can win tomorrow, which is difficult enough. Hopefully we can win when we face them again. All the other games we have nothing to do with, so it means if they win all of them then even [if] we win the two it probably wouldn't be enough, let me say it like this. But it helps, being successful helps. So you want to have more, I'm sure.
Actually, to be 100 per cent honest, we want to be successful as well. We are quite ambitious. Is it possible for us? I don't know, nobody knows. We will give it a proper try. We know that this league, not only since this transfer window which is not even finished yet, is the strongest league in the world, and I think nobody doubts that. Being ambitious in this league means you have to be ready to get some knocks, to get some punches here and there. We just have to get up again and go again. And with the quality we have, if we can do that then, again, the only plan was that we were always able to beat the best teams in the world, whoever that is. We never thought about being the best team in the world. Obviously in this moment nobody thinks we are the best team in the world – good – but we still want to try to beat the best teams, and Chelsea won the Champions League so there's not a lot of tournaments that are more important. So, let's give it a try.