Boss on Exeter, finishing and youngsters' Anfield chance

The German discussed his side's need to sharpen up on their finishing, the threat posed by the Grecians in tomorrow's third-round replay, and the opportunity that awaits the young team he is likely to select.

Read on for a transcript of a selection of his key points, or if you're an LFCTV GO subscriber, click play on the video above to watch it in full.

Klopp on scoring more goals...

I know that you always think about the right player in the right position and everything changes, but first of all what we have to do is to create chances and that is what we are doing in this moment. The next step is to make the right decision in the right moment. That’s what we did not do often enough, I said that after the game. I don't care too much about the chances we had, it’s more about the chances we didn’t have because with one different pass, one open view, one small movement, we could have had a lot more chances in this game and that’s what we work on. 

Every team, even if you score three or four goals, you have a lot of chances in these games that you didn’t use. That’s the situation we are in - we have to take the right decision in the right moment more often. You can see the players do what we want, they take the ways we show them to get in the last third. We are very often in a good position and then we don’t score and that’s the truth. We have to work on this, it’s not only to say, ‘Okay, change the player and you will see everything change’. 

We have to see the situation: from five strikers, two are left, and I think in the beginning of the season Roberto Firmino maybe was not planned as a striker. But in our situation we thought because of his skills, it’s a really good formation for creating chances in these games. For scoring it’s more than only one player, we didn’t score enough from different positions. We don't have have enough goals from the offensive midfield but the players know about it. It’s sometimes being a little more greedy in the right situations. We shoot in situations we don’t have to shoot, you can see we are greedy on goals but not cool enough to [find] the better player in the better position. We had these situations against Manchester United, even when we had big chances we could have had - with an easy pass - a nearly 100 per cent goal. That’s football. We talk about this, we show the players and we work on this. We can change in how we can help. 

Klopp on young players facing Anfield pressure...

You can never be sure. I don’t want to put too much pressure on their shoulders because they are too young. That’s another situation, the pitch was really difficult [at St James Park] but for both teams. Exeter did better on this pitch but maybe they are more used to it - but now we play at Anfield and I would say we don’t have to think too much about the first game. Of course, for analysis we need it and we did it but I think it’s a big, big chance we can show the young boys that we trust them. I think it’s very important, it’s a real competition against a good team. Now I know more about League Two players to be honest because before I didn’t know, it’s similar to Germany - a few of them are only professional but they all know how to play football. 

It’s a real man's competition. We trained yesterday with the Exeter squad and we will train today with the Exeter squad and a little session tomorrow morning. There are three more sessions together and hopefully we can all see, together with the first match, that it’s the experience we need and I think all these players are very excited. For some of them, it’s the first time in the starting line-up at Anfield. Anfield is a special place for footballers all over the world and I’m really looking forward for them, that they get this opportunity and they get this chance. Hopefully we can create an atmosphere from outside that helps the boys and then, as I said, go to the next round. 

Klopp on selecting an inexperienced side...

I can say, if someone thinks we play with the team we did because we don’t think FA Cup is an important competition, then that would be the biggest misunderstanding in the world. I can’t change the whole situation. I was not surprised because I saw the videos before, they have a lot of talented players. They are a really skilled team and they played football. On a bad pitch, we had a lot of opportunities and chances with a completely new team who had only trained 40 minutes together so now we should be a step further. It’s football and what I love in football is that it’s always possible to win and that’s for both teams. So you have to be really focused on the team but these boys that will play tomorrow are really focused. They see it as a big opportunity and I’m really looking forward to watching it.