Jürgen Klopp on Wigan draw, Salah and Lucas
Jürgen Klopp discussed Mohamed Salah's goalscoring debut and Liverpool's 1-1 friendly draw with Wigan Athletic during his post-match press conference at the DW Stadium.
Salah marked his Reds debut with an equaliser late in the first half after Wigan had taken the lead through Alex Gilbey.
Klopp was asked for his assessment of the Egypt international's first appearance for the club following the game on Friday night, with the boss also addressing questions about his side's performance and the upcoming Premier League Asia Trophy in Hong Kong.
Read on for a full transcript...
On the usefulness of the game and whether Liverpool picked up any injuries…
Yes, [we got through] without problems. Gini got the knock on the head in the first half, but that’s pretty much all I know about at the moment. First half we saw a lot of pieces of good football, second half I would say was a little bit boring. It’s always a challenge for the players, we change the system, we want to bring them all on the pitch in these games for 45 minutes because the physical aspect is really important.
You could see it was not that fine-tuned, obviously, but it’s important for all of them to get the minutes. As you can imagine, I’m not overly excited about the performance, but it’s completely OK. Especially in the first half, we could’ve scored much more goals and second half we could’ve scored goals for sure so that’s OK, but Wigan did a really good job, they have a good side with nice, young players, so it was not that easy. But another game, no injuries, good.
On Salah’s debut…
That’s a good example: You saw he had no idea how we defend usually, so he was really not involved in this. He had two days with us, then he had to go to Paris, get the papers, but now he’s here and we thought ‘let’s play him’. He’s really used to a completely different way of defending, but the first situation, nice sprint. And the goal was maybe the easiest situation in the game, but they played a few wonderful pieces of football: Roberto, Phil, Adam, Gini in the No.6 position was good. So it was OK, just not where they can be. It’s just a sign, but that’s important.
On Lucas Leiva…
I’m not 100 per cent sure what I can tell you about it because I’m not sure in this moment, but I think in all respect for Lucas and his outstanding time at Liverpool we should talk about facts, not about rumours. We have to wait, I’m not sure. Maybe something [will] happen, maybe not. It’s like last year and a half a year ago. We will see.
On transfers…
If whatever I would say here would change anything in a positive way then I would say it, but [what I say] has no influence. It’s not important what I say, it’s important what we do and we try to do the job, how you can imagine, and we feel on a good way, that’s all.
On his squad for the Premier League Asia Trophy…
The Premier League gave us a nice challenge that we can only involve 25 players, so if you take three goalkeepers then you can only have 22 [outfielders] in the squad for this tournament. That’s quite difficult. We should’ve given the list on July 8 but I couldn’t because I didn’t know who was injured and who was not when we fly, so tonight I’ll make the decision. Maybe the squad will need to be different, because Clyney has a little issue [as does] Alberto Moreno, so we have to try to bring enough players so we can play two games in difficult circumstances, that’s the plan. I have no idea at the moment, but in a few moments I will know.
On Sheyi Ojo’s absence tonight…
He was at home because we changed at half-time 10 players, 11 with the goalkeeper, twice and I thought it makes not much sense to change again 20 minutes into the second half. That’s why a few players stayed at home.