ReactionJürgen Klopp press conference: Manchester City 1-1 Liverpool
Jürgen Klopp was pleased by the second-half improvement that gained Liverpool a 1-1 draw away at Manchester City on Saturday.
After 45 minutes of the Premier League showdown at Etihad Stadium, the Reds were a goal down to Erling Haaland’s effort.
But Klopp’s men battled back and ensured they would return to Merseyside with a point courtesy of Trent Alexander-Arnold’s precise low strike late on.
In addition to an injury update on Alisson Becker and Diogo Jota, read a summary of Klopp’s post-match press conference below…
On feeling there was a goal in the game for Liverpool after going 1-0 down…
I told the boys [at half-time]: imagine we would play good, how that game could look – because we had good moments in the first half but we didn’t feel them properly. It was not that we [thought], ‘Ah OK, let’s try it again like this.’ But all their good moments had a real impact, I could see that in the body language and stuff like this, we lost compactness. We were a bit in a rush in the first line to press Ederson with nothing around. That opened up the half-spaces. Even when we were more together, they found Bernardo too often.
We told between Dom and Mo, better communication, that doesn’t happen. Then the last line always against City has to step in and defend into midfield, so that was then either Trent or Joel. And it was a bit tricky. In the second half we made that a bit clearer how we want to do that, with Trent more in that position already and taking the risk in the last line but not in between the lines. Then we scored a goal, that was a very positive thing. Trent scored it. Trent was super-influential today. Not only in the goal – around the goal, in all situations he was a really important player and a really good game of him.
On how much his team’s mentality and defiance pleased him…
Mentality is a big word. When I speak about body language, it’s a bit similar to mentality. I didn’t like it too much in the first half. But it’s really difficult, we are still in the early stages with the team. Before the game I had to, in the press conference, talk about: can Macca play as a six? Yeah, he can. He can, definitely. And everybody who saw the game could say he can play as a six – but how was it around? How compact were we around? That’s then the problem, and that was not as great. We went through a lot of tough moments this season already and this today coming here is a tough one.
I know it’s part of the circus and all these kinds of things but preparing the most difficult game of the season away at the Etihad with one session is really a challenge. Maybe I’m just not good enough! That’s absolutely possible. But it’s really tricky to do that in 30 minutes on the pitch and 45 in the meeting. So, we needed the first half maybe to understand even more about that and we improved in details, which makes a difference, and we scored a goal and brought it over the line and I am very happy about that.
On Alexander-Arnold’s overall performance…
Very good. He played a really good game, super-influential. We changed it, if you want, with the position; we brought him and made it more clear where he has to be in these moments. But he did that really well and had still his moments with Doku where he was really strong in the one-on-one situations. You could see in a lot of moments how difficult it is against him, he is a really good dribbler. Trent was pretty influential today, in a good way.
On whether the game felt like a ‘test passed’ for Liverpool…
For us I think we passed a test today, I’m not sure it was the test. If that makes sense. In a business where nobody has time, it’s really difficult to ask for it and to use it. Last year when the team had played long together – much longer than this team now – we had no real chance in this game. Today we had a chance. I’m not silly, I see the game, so if you ask me who would have won the game more likely, it was City obviously. But we had our moments and we won games with lesser chances against City, to be honest, from counter-attacking – and if we could have used them better then it would have been a very interesting game.
We don’t check if we are as good as City. We want to be ready in these games to give them a proper game, and that’s what we did today. It’s not that I look at ourselves and think, ‘OK, that’s the finished article, that’s how we can play’ because I saw a lot of performances I was not overly happy with; the attitude was still good, but the performance. But it’s a super-difficult week, how can you judge that? Ten days away, coming back, one training [session] and the most difficult game. It’s really tricky. So, I’m not here to tell now, ‘We should have done that better.’ I take what I get and work from here, and that’s what we do.
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