Liverpool 3-1 Newcastle United: Jürgen Klopp's reaction
Jürgen Klopp took satisfaction in an ‘absolutely deserved’ win as Liverpool beat Newcastle United 3-1 in the Premier League on Thursday evening.
The Reds came from a goal down at Anfield to record their eighth straight victory in all competitions.
Jonjo Shelvey put the visitors 1-0 up before Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah netted to establish a half-time lead for Klopp's side.
Trent Alexander-Arnold completed the scoring in spectacular fashion with 87 minutes on the clock when he fired an unstoppable effort into the top corner from around 25 yards out.
Read on for a full transcript of the boss' post-match press conference...
On Liverpool 'putting a lot in' to get the three points...
No problem with that, that's the Premier League. The opponent is obviously fighting for staying in the league, put everything in, threw everything on the pitch, had a very defensive organisation, went 1-0 up – so this is the recipe for a difficult game. But we still won it – absolutely deserved and that's it pretty much.
On how nice it was to watch Alexander-Arnold's goal...
Absolutely. I thought it was the best long ball we played today! Absolutely crazy goal. His shooting technique is really different level and really cool to watch. In a situation like that, having the positivity and optimism to do it is, again, the basis for these kind of goals. So, well done.
On Fabinho, Curtis Jones and Virgil van Dijk missing the game after registering suspected positive tests for COVID-19 and whether the club have 'contained it' heading into the weekend...
We hope, we hope. Yeah, the situation is difficult for us, for the whole world, that's how it is. We pretty much woke up this morning and had three positive cases. So the process we follow now at the training round is that before we enter the training ground, we do a lateral flow test and then go back in the car and then we wait for the result. And in these moments we had three positive tests, which is obviously not too cool, and we wait obviously for confirmation because there is still the possibility of false positive. But for today we couldn't wait for that and we had to make the decision, send the boys home. So there were three players out, two of them would have started obviously today – it was, of course, not a reason to cancel the game tonight or to even ask for it, but we will see how it now develops. This virus is now around us so long that it's not really likely that it will stay at three, [but] the boys don't have a lot of spare time to go where they could pick it. All of them are vaccinated – they had already the booster – and it still can happen, that's just how it is. But we have a really, really good chance that the boys get through it now without proper symptoms. So far, they don't have any symptoms – they were more surprised than us that they had it but that's what you have to accept and that's what we do. Hopefully they are quickly back again.
On whether the players had taken PCR tests…
They did a PCR as well [as lateral flow tests]. We have it now but we didn't have it when the game started, so that's pretty much the story.
On whether Liverpool’s first goal should have stood…
I didn't see it back it yet. I pretty much gave interviews [since the game finished]. I had the question already in pretty much each interview, but I had no time to watch it back, so I don’t know. I saw a player down – I think when we scored the goal there was only one player down, if I am right – I spoke to the linesman on our side and he said it was all fine, just two players bounced into each other. I cannot judge the situation from there; I think if there is a head injury, we scored the goal a second or two seconds later so you can sort that afterwards but we were not involved in the incident as far as I know. We didn’t jump into them, they jumped into each other if the things people told me are right. That’s it. I can imagine Eddie [Howe] is not happy about that, but I saw the goal and had no time to watch it back yet.