Klopp: Let's produce this kind of display at Anfield
Jürgen Klopp has set Liverpool a target of reproducing the sort of form that saw them demolish Manchester City 4-1 at the Etihad Stadium on home soil.
The Reds were simply irresistible as they swept aside Manuel Pellegrini’s men with a high-intensity performance on Saturday evening.
It followed on from a similarly impressive showing away to Chelsea last month in which they recorded an emphatic 3-1 success over the reigning champions.
Now Klopp is keen for his players to conjure up similar kind of displays at Anfield.
“I would love to win a game like this at Anfield,” said the boss. “That’s our next challenge. We now play Bordeaux and then Swansea, and at this moment I don’t know enough about Swansea.
“If they saw our game against Crystal Palace maybe they will stay with 50 people deep in the space and shoot only long balls?
“Then we have to find a solution - and we will have a solution, but then we have to score goals in the right moments.
“On and on and on. Development.”
Despite the manner of Liverpool’s victory at the Etihad, Klopp is refusing to be drawn into any debate on whether his side can clinch a return to the Champions League this season.
Nevertheless, the manager does feel the result and performance will go some way to aiding his side’s development.
The German said: “It's only okay that you ask this [about top four] if you ask it as well after Crystal Palace. We can’t change our targets every two weeks just because we have won.
“We don’t have to think about this. Our situation is difficult enough. But we played very well.
“We have to work, that’s all. If somebody thinks after a game like this we can go to the top of the table, it's really not my problem.
“I don’t think that way.”
He added: “It doesn’t work, if you are stuck in the forest and it's dark and you are afraid and someone tells you not to be then it doesn’t work. It's your own mind.
“We need results like this, we need performances like this, so that we start believing in ourselves.
“That's normal. You cannot switch the lamp on and off, on and off. So it's very bright [after Saturday] but we have to go on.
“Our situation now is to do the best we can do. We trained with a few players as most came back in the middle of the week. We couldn’t be sure that we would start with the biggest confidence after what happened against Palace but now have more and more confidence in the squad. Everybody could see it. We are not satisfied though.
“We've had bigger chances [in other games] since I was here but we did not take them. [On Saturday] we made the first three, I think, had more then, and didn't take all of them.
“But you saw at 3-1 the game could have changed. They changed the system at half-time, went 4-4-2 second half, put Sterling in the middle together with Aguero. It was difficult but possible. It was all we needed and the lads did well.”