Boss discusses Phillips-Kabak pairing and Davies adapting
Jürgen Klopp hopes Nathaniel Phillips and Ozan Kabak can continue to strengthen their promising centre-half partnership.
The duo recorded their second clean sheet together when they impressed during Liverpool's 2-0 Champions League victory over RB Leipzig in midweek.
And the Reds boss hinted Phillips and Kabak, if fit, may play again at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday night in the Premier League as he targets consistency in the position for the remainder of the campaign.
Read on to see what Klopp had to say about the centre-back situation during his pre-Wolves press conference...
On a second clean sheet for the Phillips-Kabak partnership and how much confidence that can give them...
A lot, a lot, but it's about the general defending. As a centre-half if you can pick up the right challenges and you can pick up the right balls because the balls are forced or kind of defended already from the players in front of you, that makes life much more easy. That's how football should be actually. In the end you speak about the centre-halves in a positive way, which is good, but it was about the general defending of that day and that helped the two boys a lot.
On whether it could be a pairing to serve him for the rest of the season and whether they are playing to show they can be a 'longer-term solution'...
Look, there's no test now or whatever, it's not a testing period about long-term future and stuff like this. No, we will see. I hope they will stay fit, I cannot sit here and give guarantees for these kind of things. I heard nothing different so far, so I think they will be available. And it looked good and if they are physically ready to go again, which I hope, then why should we change it? That's clear. You want to have consistency and we never had. How I said, that looked really good. Of course, hopefully they can play a lot of games, if not all of the rest. But if not, then we have to find solutions again and Rhys Williams, I don't want to forget him, he's in a good moment, Ben Davies has to adapt, it was always clear. A lot of players came here to Liverpool and the most famous story is maybe Andy Robertson and it took him half a year in a normal season, where pretty much everything else was kind of settled, to settle in. Ben is a really good player but he has to get used to all the stuff here as well and these kind of things. That's how it is. What we have now still [are] options and hopefully it will stay like this.
On whether he's building up Ben Davies as a 'longer-term project'...
I don't make these kinds of judgements, really. What you are surprised about, I don't know. But I don't tell Ben now you have just to train until the middle of May and then we see further. No, no, no. It will take as long as it takes. But the problem was that it was clear that we will not start with two new centre-halves if we don't have to, because of the situation and the position. It's really important that the boys in the last line, especially, are used to each other, and the more games you can play together, the better it is. So that's why we always figured it a little bit here and there and tried to make it as consistent as possible. But a lot of things disturbed that process but now it's OK. Ben will play when he will play, so that's how it is.