Jürgen Klopp's verdict on Community Shield clash with Man City
Jürgen Klopp was encouraged by the signs Liverpool showed with their performance in Sunday's Community Shield tie against Manchester City.
The Reds were beaten on penalties at Wembley after an absorbing encounter that saw goals in either half from Raheem Sterling and Joel Matip.
Klopp’s side were on top for long periods in the second half and struck the woodwork three times, as well as having a Mohamed Salah header cleared off the line in stoppage-time.
Read a summary of the manager’s post-match verdict below…
On his team’s performance being a good indication for the season…
Absolutely. I’m completely happy about the full performance. I said before the game, if you want to be prepared for Man City you have to make a pre-season game against Man City; no team plays like them. You saw that in a few moments in the first half, when they can do what they do. We struggled a little bit positioning-wise but that’s normal. The biggest threat was pretty much the long balls from Bravo in behind, where our last line was not a line. The first two balls, I think. The third ball was dangerous as well with Sane then on the other side. That makes it difficult but that’s how they stretched our formation and then when you expect these balls, they play it in between, in the half-spaces, that’s pretty tricky. We could have had a bit better positioning, we changed that for the second half, which helped us a lot.
The second half is about will and all that stuff. That’s another thing in pre-season: you fill your body with all this physical information but you are not used to it after four or five weeks that you really can go over that point. We went over that point today, then nobody felt tired anymore and they could really go. I liked that a lot. Football-wise, the second half was just really, really good, the best way you can play against City. They are in the early stages as well, they will be in a different shape in a couple of weeks, for sure. But having this amount of chances we had today is a very good sign for us, absolutely. I liked the game a lot. I don’t like the result but I liked the game a lot, so for us it was very, very important.
On the hunger for more trophies the Reds showed…
We will try everything. It’s not as much important what I could say but what the boys showed today. I thought they looked pretty hungry. That doesn’t mean it will work out but we fought today after all the things that were said about the competition, both teams wanted to win it desperately, I saw that. My team is not in doubt about being satisfied or whatever, to stop working or stop running. The character of the team is still incredibly good. We had a difficult pre-season but the boys did what they had to do and were affected by it. We played football games against really good teams and that didn’t feel too good. It was very important we all gave ourselves and our supporters a sign of the performance today. Now let’s carry on.
On kicking off the season on a Friday night…
I’m fine with Friday and I’m fine with the time we have until Chelsea [in the UEFA Super Cup]. Am I overly happy that we then have only three days for the Southampton game? No. But it’s the situation and I cannot change it, I don’t even think about it. We come back from Istanbul and then play on the Saturday. We then play Southampton. All these games will be incredibly difficult but it’s our schedule and we never moaned about the schedule.