Klopp: We want to add a few things to last season's recipe
Jürgen Klopp knows the ingredients Liverpool must add to their game to ensure they improve on a positive 2016-17 which ended with a top-four finish.
The Reds saw off strong competition to secure a place in the Champions League qualifying play-off at the end of a season that featured a first half filled with attacking, inventive football and a conclusion most notable for the resolve and fortitude on show.
Klopp and his team are currently in Hong Kong and preparing to face Leicester City in the final of the Premier League Asia Trophy on Saturday night.
As he previewed the match in a press conference today, the manager discussed how his ‘recipe’ for success might be enhanced in the coming campaign.
“Take the recipe you saw last year and involve a few nice things,” he said.
“Like better defending, more concentration, smarter play, better game understanding, learning more from the game in the game, reacting better to these situations, being more clinical in more than a few situations. That would be a nice meal then!”
Klopp added: “I am the captain of the steering wheel, and everybody else looks over my shoulders and hopes that it will work. I know that, it’s no problem, I feel it in every moment.
“But to talk about it doesn’t make it more likely. I think we have proved that we are really trying to get the biggest, highest, most sunny thing you can win. We go for it 100 per cent.
“Until then, we have to work until we get it. That’s what we will do.”
Liverpool earned a spot in the Asia Trophy final with a 2-0 win over Crystal Palace on Wednesday, when Dominic Solanke and Divock Origi were the goalscorers.
Klopp stated his satisfaction with the all-round performance after the fixture but as he previewed the meeting with Leicester, the German’s thoughts had moved on to further improvements.
“We know now it’s a really nice tournament, a fantastic atmosphere,” he said.
“We know it’s pre-season and more important games will come in the season hopefully, but it’s the only game we play on Saturday so we want to be focused 100 per cent and we want to see the next step.
“I thought we played well [against Palace] but we could have done better. We had a few defensive situations where we could and should have reacted better and should have won the challenge. But we didn’t.
“If we play like we do, this ball-orientated kind of defending, then when you are there you have a bigger number of players in and around the challenge.
“We had sometimes three versus one but the one – [Andros] Townsend or [Wilfried] Zaha – they sorted the situation and that’s easy mathematics, we have seven against 10 from Crystal Palace in this moment. We should avoid situations like this.
“We want to risk, we want to win the ball in situations like this – but if we are there we have to win it.
“So a lot of things we can already, a few days after the game, improve and that’s what we’re looking for.”