Press conferenceJürgen Klopp on Brentford win, confidence, Minamino form and more

The Reds moved up to second in the Premier League standings thanks to goals at Anfield from Fabinho, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Takumi Minamino.

Fabinho opened the scoring on the stroke of half-time as Oxlade-Chamberlain and birthday boy Minamino added to the scoreline during the second period.

Read on for a transcript of Klopp's post-match press conference...

On Minamino's performance on his 27th birthday...

Today pretty much started with birthday songs in all available languages and it was really nice. So Taki obviously got the boost already before the game through the nice songs. And then, meanwhile, coming on and being that much in the game and scoring this really nice goal was absolutely helpful for him and for us. Very important. How I said, Taki's in a good moment and that's why it was very helpful.

On Minamino returning from injury...

That's now a little bit ago. Of course, injury interrupts then rhythm and all these kinds of things. He played now the last game, 90 minutes, and now today coming on, that was the rhythm, it was right for him. It was Thursday-Sunday – it's not easy after coming back from injury, so that's why he didn't start today. It's good. How I said, he's in a good moment.

On whether his strong celebrations at the end of the game were due to relief or because he thinks it's an important result ahead of Thursday's Carabao Cup tie with Arsenal...

Both. Do I have to make a difference there? The way Brentford plays against us is really uncomfortable. As the team at home, if you want to and have to win the game then you want to control the game. To control this game is particularly difficult because the ball felt like it was 20 minutes in the air today and there were so many situations – header, header, header, header, header. So you need to be full of desire in these moments to sort it. You have to bring the ball down on the floor and from there you have to play, so it's really tricky and that's why I'm so happy.

The game against Brentford – I knew before that it will be a really tough one – it was a tough one and that's why I'm so happy that we did so well in other moments. We showed the boys at half-time three situations where we did really well in the first half. I think we had more but we showed them three where we really played the way we have to play. [We] scored on top of that a goal from a set-piece, which is absolutely helpful because the set-pieces against Arsenal were really bad. Today they were really good and we should keep that – that would be very helpful. I think apart from a spell in the second half when they took a bit more risk, we needed a little bit too long to adapt to it, so they had then a chance, a real chance, but in the moment when we adapted we controlled the game again, scored really nice goals and I'm really happy about it.

On the win improving confidence and showing there's 'goals in the team' ahead of Thursday...

I'm not surprised about that but winning is good for confidence, definitely. I don't think we struggled confidence-wise. We can pretty much cut off the public noise, so what's happening around. We knew against Arsenal what was not right but what the world out there makes of it then in the moment, so like just putting the finger on the obvious thing that a couple of players are not here – world-class players, by the way. We knew that, so we didn't have to read it and we could do our own thing. And that's what we did.

On whether he needs to turn 'doubters into believers' in the title race...

Yes, but if you would do something like this, we wouldn't do it in public. So, we don't have to convince anybody outside to believe. If they want to believe, they can believe. I think people are with us, they want to enjoy the ride, they are ready to go for as much as we can. This is not the situation to talk about a title fight obviously. I'm not sure how many points are in it now – it's 11, one game in hand? In a normal world, nothing happens anymore – but what is normal nowadays? We try to do our part. With the rest, we have nothing to do.