Klopp press conference: Shaqiri's future, Ox form and Wolves difficulty
Jürgen Klopp explained why Liverpool do not intend to further trim the first-team squad this month as he looked ahead to Thursday's clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers.
During his pre-match press conference at Melwood, the boss was asked about the future of Xherdan Shaqiri, the challenge of taking on a Wolves side the Reds edged 1-0 in December, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Read what Klopp had to say on the subjects below…
On Shaqiri’s future and how important he can be for the rest of the season…
The majority of December and January we had a bench full of kids – wonderful kids, but kids. So, how could we think about giving a player to anybody? I don’t understand that. It’s not about Shaq or whatever, it’s about pretty much everybody. That we just have to keep them for sorting our situation and not the situation for different clubs. If somebody would come around the corner and ask properly – which didn’t happen – maybe, if they are desperate, we think. But there’s absolutely no intention from our side to do anything.
On Wolves being a difficult team to face…
Wolves are not only this year, but last year, really difficult to play. They play a similar system to other teams. It depends a little bit how they set up – three or five at the back. But they do it differently, Coady has a different role, they make the pitch really big and ask you for a lot of footwork. You have to run a lot. That’s normal and good, it’s their way to play. For us, there are solutions for that but not without working a lot. You cannot play on a 50 or 60 per cent basis against Wolves, then you have absolutely no chance. That’s the challenge for that game.
On whether Oxlade-Chamberlain has been ‘frustrated’ after recent games…
Oxlade is in a good shape. He’s not [frustrated with himself], he just looks like this. I asked him, it’s all fine. It’s normal a player wants to play 90 minutes. We have to learn from our own past. Oxlade is an unbelievably important player for us and there are moments in a game when players get a bit tired, then they show up again and stuff like this. I try to read the players during the game and try to understand in which moment or situation they are, energy level-wise and stuff like this. I make a decision and sometimes I hit the point and sometimes not.
Maybe with Ox last time I was a bit too early but he got a knock on top of that, he was limping a little bit. If a midfielder is limping you start looking in more detail and then if in one or two defensive situations the midfielder is not there where he should be, you think, ‘OK, it has an impact’ and then we have to make a decision. That’s what we did. After the game, it didn’t feel that bad anymore with the knock he got. That’s good, absolutely good and all OK. Most of the time we had really good options to make substitutions and in this case as well. Adam [Lallana] came on and helped us in the last few games a lot. We have good options and as long as we have good options we will make changes.