'It's a cliché but the next game really is the most important'

Saturday’s meeting with Stoke City may fall between the two legs of a Champions League semi-final tie with AS Roma but, with the battle to secure a top-four finish ongoing, there is no chance of Liverpool looking beyond their penultimate home game of the Premier League season.

“Of course it’s really important because there are still some games left in [the] Premier League and nothing is decided yet, so every game is really important,” Klavan told Liverpoolfc.com.

“That is also, I think, what Jürgen has told us as well and we’ve been going like this for what feels like the whole season. You’re looking at every game as the most important one and that’s how we are going to, and should, proceed to the Stoke game as well.”

Klopp consistently espouses the virtue of focusing entirely on Liverpool’s next fixture in public, and Klavan offered an insight into how the boss goes about doing so behind closed doors, too.

“Always the next day we have a recap from the last game and then we move to the next game,” the defender explained.

“There’s this situation when the focus is going to be set. Of course it feels like it’s a cliché that ‘the next game is the most important’, but it is and you’re always going to have to remind that to yourself as well.”

The Reds go into this weekend’s round of top-flight fixtures still very much in control of their own destiny in terms of qualification for the 2018-19 Champions League.

Currently sitting third, Klopp’s team trail Manchester United by three points and lead Tottenham Hotspur by the same margin, while they have an eight-point cushion on fifth-placed Chelsea.

All three of those clubs retain a game in hand on Liverpool, though, and Klavan insists every available member of the squad is fully prepared for the challenge ahead.

“There is, there is,” the No.17 replied, when asked if there is still plenty of work to do domestically.

“It’s a really interesting end [to the season] in both ways, in the league and in the Champions League, so everybody is motivated, everybody is up to task and you see how important the whole squad is. 

“That in a way is also kind of a cliché - ‘everybody is important, the whole squad’ - but you can see that at the end of the season we’ve got some injuries, some bad ones that are a real pity, but everybody is needed to achieve those goals that we want to get.”

Two late goals by West Bromwich Albion ensured Liverpool’s last Premier League outing at The Hawthorns ended in a frustrating 2-2 draw - a result Klavan is determined to better against Stoke.

He concluded: “We kind of lost those two points in West Brom, we just need to pick them up again and keep on moving towards [finishing in] the top four.”