The gaffer on Bournemouth 'solutions' and secret to clean sheets
Jürgen Klopp discussed the challenge of beating Bournemouth and the secret to Liverpool's run of three successive clean sheets at his pre-match press conference.
The manager spoke to reporters at Melwood on Friday morning ahead of his side’s trip to the south coast to face the Cherries on Sunday afternoon.
As well as providing updates on fitness, transfers and Divock Origi, Klopp explained how the Reds will have to ‘find solutions’ to claim a win over Eddie Howe’s charges this weekend and highlighted the team ethic behind defending.
Read on for a summary…
On the next three games…
Until now, everything is OK. Of course, the problem is not where the teams – Bournemouth, West Ham and Middlesbrough – are in the table. I saw a lot of Premier League games and there’s no doubt Bournemouth are doing really well. They were unlucky again last week and maybe should have had a penalty, could have had a result, for sure, and did well against a strong side. West Ham are struggling in the table obviously, but still have a lot of quality so we should not think about their situation in the table. It’s about the quality they can bring on the pitch on a good day. Middlesbrough away, I think everybody until now had problems there. I can’t see it as an easy journey. They are all tough games.
But in this moment, the good thing is that I don’t have to think about West Ham and Middlesbrough, the only thing I have to think about is Bournemouth. They did really well, I have seen a lot of games of theirs this season and they did well, they are a football-playing side with a good plan. Eddie Howe is doing a fantastic job there. They have, of course, the pressure we all have to win games, but it’s a club that knows about the difficulty of the league. So they are cool enough and confident enough to cause each team problems. We need to find solutions for these problems and that’s what we’ve tried to do since Tuesday.
LFCTV GO: Klopp's pre-match press conference in full
On the run of clean sheets and defensive improvements…
We have conceded 14 goals in the league; five of them in the first two games. I was never worried about the defence’s performance, strength or skills. I respect 100 per cent that you all have to speak about a few things, and when we score a lot and concede a few then it’s something you have to talk about. We have to think more about it from a logical point of view – you cannot play football all the time without conceding goals. It’s part of the game; you make a mistake and the other team is doing well, so you concede a goal. Of course, working longer together helps a lot.
But I know you like to put it on one player – ‘because of him’ we didn’t concede goals or ‘because of him’. It would be fantastic if it worked like this because you would always bring in this player all the time and you would never concede a goal anymore. But it’s a team game, it’s teamwork and defending together and having together the luck in the right situation. Sometimes you are unlucky, like Chelsea were when Hendo scored! It was not to defend, I would say. You only need to fix it so it’s not easy to create chances against you. And when they create chances, they outplayed you or whatever, then you need individual quality – centre-half, goalkeeper, whatever. Until then, you have to defend together, close the spaces together and make it as hard as possible for them to come through.