Jürgen Klopp press conference: Burnley win, Robertson's return and Anfield's record league attendance

ReactionJürgen Klopp press conference: Burnley win, Robertson's return and Anfield's record league attendance

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By Sam Williams at Anfield

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Jürgen Klopp lauded the character of his team after Liverpool overcame Burnley 3-1 in front of an Anfield record league attendance of 59,896.

Diogo Jota, Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez got the goals to ensure the Reds responded positively to last weekend’s loss at Arsenal and quickly returned to the summit of the Premier League, having been briefly overtaken by virtue of Manchester City’s win against Everton in Saturday’s lunchtime kick-off.

Jota’s 31st-minute opener was equalised by Dara O’Shea on the stroke of half-time, but Diaz restored the hosts’ lead in the early stages of the second period before Nunez sealed all three points late on.

Read a summary of Klopp’s post-match press conference below.

On having to fight for the result and being delighted to get the win in the end…

No problem with fighting hard for the result. Actually, I can’t remember the last time when that wasn’t the case. But today obviously, for some obvious and for some less obvious reasons, it was clear it will be a really tricky afternoon. It was about how we deal with it, how much character we can show, and the boys showed exactly what we needed. [At] the start of the game, we were a bit too much in a rush. That was the problem: we played too quick, too direct, we couldn’t react with the formation, couldn’t win balls back. They had counter-attacks and that looks not great and doesn’t feel great on top of that.

We score our goal, wonderful, find our way in the game, and then we concede the equaliser in the last second, pretty much, before half-time. But 1-1 is not a problem, I wanted us to play better football and to play calmer football and thankfully we had two situations to show them – one with a diagonal ball which we saw from Virg to Trent when the winger went inside and then playing around, having the right players in the right positions, and we did that.

Trent Alexander-Arnold injury update

NewsTrent Alexander-Arnold injury updateJürgen Klopp has confirmed Trent Alexander-Arnold was withdrawn at half-time of Liverpool's 3-1 win over Burnley due to injury.

It was then obviously the problem in half-time that we had to take Trent off. That’s a double problem, if you want: one is Trent off and the other is we don’t have a right-back available so we told Curtis what he had to do. We changed the formation slightly to make it as simple as possible for him because it’s the first time he ever played the position and we don’t want him to be the inverted right-back and think about these kind of things as well, so he did exceptionally well.

Harvey came on, did really well, all the other boys did really well [and] we scored this wonderful 2-1 in the right moment. That helped, obviously, for us to give the game the right direction. They still had their moments because of the quality they have. I think it’s a pretty strange situation Burnley is in, they play much better than… they cause everybody problems. It’s not just us, they cause everybody problems. That’s quite special with the amount of points that they have, that they always come in the next game with such a positive mentality – really, I admire that a lot.

Then we scored a third one and we could have scored more, so it’s all good. It was a really good game, a really good result, besides the Trent situation perfect. We lost this morning Ali with, I don’t know, we lost Joey with the flu, Ali we will see, and before the game Ryan felt a little bit somewhere. They told me then he is fine but you cannot bring on a player who felt something in the warm-up, so we have to recover quickly and hopefully a lot of the boys will be back for the next game because we need them, obviously.

On Andy Robertson’s return to fitness being a boost…

Yeah it is, absolutely – all of them but Robbo now especially as since we worked together he was never that long out, so for him it was very strange. Yeah, super-important, he played a top game. He had now not only the situation that he is coming back but even when he came back we had these kind of different sessions because we play all the time. We don’t have real sessions where you can feel the game again, it’s small-sided games [with] all the other guys who recover and the few who didn’t play. When you come back from injury you do different stuff so he needed the last week, three sessions, big pitch, 11 v 11, whatever we did, to feel the situation again. And besides that we had to force him a little bit to just ignore the fact he can’t have rhythm and bring himself in kind of a rhythm, and that’s what he did.

On the new Anfield Road Stand and the stadium hosting a record league attendance…

Outstanding, oh my God! Before I really heard it I saw it already [and] it looks exceptional, it looks absolutely exceptional. This stadium grew and grew. It was always wonderful but now it’s really outrageously wonderful. Really top, really top, really loud in the right moments. I know it’s a game [where] there were tricky moments and then it’s difficult to be on your toes… but it’s all good and I am really happy that we have them now finally back, it gives a lot of people the opportunity to see this wonderful team playing football.

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This article has been automatically translated and, while all reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, some errors in translation are possible. Please refer to the original English-language version of the article for the official version.