Boss: Saturday night football? I am hungry at 12pm, but not at 7.45pm!
Jürgen Klopp admits he is excited by the prospect of a Saturday evening kick-off against West Bromwich Albion and is hopeful Anfield under the floodlights can conjure up a ‘special atmosphere’.
The Reds take on the Baggies in the FA Cup fourth-round tie at the rather unusual time of 7.45pm tomorrow night, aiming to instantly return to winning ways following Monday’s loss at Swansea City.
And Klopp is relishing the idea of running out on home soil on a Saturday evening.
He told his pre-match press conference: “I like night games and I think Saturday night is a night on which people in general don’t go too early to their beds. They want to go out in Liverpool afterwards, which is another good thing to do.
“I think it’s a good time to play football, to be honest. Much better than 12 o’clock – I am hungry at 12, but not at 7.45pm!
“I like it and hope people like it as well. It’s a floodlight game and that’s very good. It’s very important that we create a special atmosphere.
“We played a few weeks ago against West Brom and they’ve developed since then. We played not that well that day, but they did well so respect.
“Mainly we’ve had good games in the last few weeks, but that game was not too good and the last game we played was not too good, so there are two more reasons to step up again and do it really differently.
“For this, we need a special atmosphere. The biggest difference in Germany between a cup game and normal league game is that there will be a winner after the game, but in England it’s slightly different because we have the opportunity to play it again.
“But it’s a cup game and an important competition for us – a very important competition – so we really want to go through to the next round, so for this we need to perform.
“West Bromwich Albion since Alan [Pardew] came in were still struggling a little bit, but you can really see big improvement and that makes the job not easy for us.”