After the 1-1 draw with Manchester City, Liverpool coach Klopp said at a press conference that the team only had one training session before the game against Manchester City and the situation was really difficult.
About the feeling of being 1 goal behind
——I told the players at halftime: Imagine what the game was like when we played well, because we had good moments in the first half, but we didn’t take advantage of them. I could see in the body language of the players and things like that that we lost the compactness. We were a little anxious up front and pressed Ederson at the wrong time, which allowed us to leave some space for our opponents, and even when we were more compact, they could always find the B seat.
“I told Szoboszlai and Salah to communicate better, but that didn’t happen. Then, against Manchester City, your last line of defense needs to step up and defend in midfield, either Trent Alexander-Arnold or Joe Gomez. It’s a bit tricky and in the second half we showed more clearly how we wanted to do it and Alexander-Arnold has been more in that position and more of a risk-taker in the last line of defence. Then we scored one goal, which was very positive. Trent Alexander-Arnold scored and he was very influential today, not just in front of the goal but also around the penalty area. He is a very good player in any situation and played a very good game.
About the team’s mentality
–That’s an important word, and when I talk about body language, it’s kind of similar to mindset. I didn’t really like the first half, but it was really tough and we were still in the early stages as a team overall. At the press conference before the game, I had to answer: Can McAllister play the No. 6 position? Of course he can, everyone who watched this game can say that he can play at the 6 position, but what about? Were we compact? That was the problem then, but not that serious. We’ve been through a lot of tough moments this season, including today.
It’s really a challenge to prepare for the toughest away game of the season in one training session, maybe I’m not good enough. It’s definitely possible, but it’s really tricky to do it in the 30 minutes on the pitch and the 45 minutes in the meeting, so we probably need to know more about the situation in the first half and we improve on the details and that It’s very important. We scored a goal and broke the opponent’s defense. I’m very happy about it.
About Arnold’s overall performance
——Excellent, he did very well, even facing Doku, who has excellent one-on-one ability, he also performed very well. You can see that a lot of times it’s difficult to face Alexander-Arnold, his dribbling is great and he was very influential today.
Can it be said that Liverpool passed the “test” in this game?
–For us, I think we passed the test today. I’m not sure if it was a test, we had that team last year that played together longer, much longer than this team now, but we had no real chance in that game. We had a chance today, I saw the game and of course if you ask me who is more likely to win, it’s obviously Manchester City. But we had our moments, and frankly, we had some chances to fight back, and if we can take advantage of them better, it will be a very interesting game.
“We’re not going to test if we’re as good as Manchester City, we want to be ready in games like this and that’s what we did today. It was a very difficult week, a training session and then the most difficult game, which was really tricky. I wouldn’t say we should have done better, I would accept the situation and build on it and that’s what we did.