Boss on Kabak and Davies adapting, Thiago form, Brighton and more
Jürgen Klopp touched on a number of topics when he spoke to the media ahead of Liverpool's Premier League meeting with Brighton & Hove Albion.
The Reds boss, speaking the day after the acquisition of Ben Davies and Ozan Kabak, discussed how quickly the defensive duo can get up to speed with his team's style of play.
Then after praising the work Graham Potter is doing at Brighton, Klopp was asked about the form of Thiago Alcantara, who has started the last five matches for the champions.
Read on for a summary of the manager's pre-match press conference...
On how quickly Kabak and Davies can be assimilated into the Liverpool team...
But the good thing is it's football still and in Germany they play football and they play football in the Championship, so that's now not the problem. But how I said, coming into the defence, so 12 or 13 different centre-half pairings and that makes it more difficult, for example, for Neco [Williams] and Kostas [Tsimikas] as well. Because Kostas is new and Neco is still young, these kind of things, and you search for kind of stability in the team when you change that often. But we obviously don't live in an ideal world and that means we have to be smart, we have to be quick and we try everything to do that. There are different things we can do and help them and that it goes faster. But we play obviously different to Preston and obviously different to Schalke, that's clear. They will need time but we don't have a lot of time. So we will use the time we have in our hands and try our best. So if they would have to start tomorrow night together, I think that would be not too cool. But we will give them a few more days.
On his thoughts about Brighton...
I have not enough words to say how much I respect what Graham is doing there. The way they play is really good and unbelievable. So they have a clear idea, good players in the right positions. In the end, they lose games anyway – that makes it really strange. But they stick to their idea and I respect that a lot. Now against Tottenham obviously it paid completely off, it was a well-deserved three points and obviously they could have scored already earlier in that game, controlled it then in the right moments. They are just a football-playing side. I think it's probably fair to say that Brighton fights for staying in the league with the points they have, but it's really nice that they show you can fight for staying in the league with this kind of football as well. Not only because Adam Lallana is there now, but I try to see them as often as I can and I know how good they are. It will be a tough one. They defend well, they attack especially well, so we have to be ready for this game. Is it the right moment? I don't know. For us, it feels rather like a good moment. That Brighton is now in a good moment as well, I have no problem with that. In the end, you have to beat the team you face and that's what we try.
On reassuring Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams that they're still very much part of the squad and can still play a part this season and beyond...
Yeah, I'm not sure if they think exactly like that. For Rhys, for example, it's different. Rhys played super games for us – people forget immediately these kind of things. But we won with Rhys as a centre-half, we won at Bergamo, for example, played a really good game. Rhys played in the home game against Tottenham, we won that game and he played a really good game. So there were really, really good games for both. Of course they have a future here. But for Rhys the problem is he didn't play enough now to get kind of rhythm, so he needs to play football in his age – it makes no sense to play a few minutes and then sit on the bench for two or three games. So we can give him now the opportunity again to play football and improve, so that's good. And the rest is an open race, if you want.
The players who are here actually have a little bit [of] an advantage in that they know what we are doing. But the new players come in and I know they are full of ambitions and want to start immediately. That's all good and that helps us keep going. In the last few weeks it was always the last two men standing play centre-half pretty much and the rest we build a team around that. Now we have more options and now can watch training. After City we have a full training week, which helps massively. So we then make decisions like we always do usually in a football season, that we couldn't do in the last few weeks. Now we can do that again. How I said, Nat and Hendo looked really good. Fabinho is not too far away, so he can play in the position obviously. But we now have options again. And with all the games coming up, that was the thing we had to make sure of – that we had these options. Then it's always about the players to work for a chance and use the chance. That's how it is.
On Thiago's start to his Liverpool career...
Good, good, good, really good. Of course it was far from being perfect with him coming in, being injured pretty early and stuff like this. That's all not really good but not important anymore. Then coming in, he had to learn how we play and we had to learn how he's playing without changing everything. So you buy Thiago Alcantara from Bayern and tell him, 'OK, nice but from now on you do this different, this different, this different'? It's a job and then usually you need time for that. And it settles, things find together kind of naturally without changing too much, just making it better by using the different skillsets. It was absolutely OK but then we thought it helps because thinking again what did he do at Bayern, which role did he play there – yes, it was six but it was more a double six and these kind of things – and so we decided to adapt his position a little bit. It worked out pretty well. It gives us stability, gives him stability, we can use his football skills, which are obviously outstanding. Really good.