Press conferenceJürgen Klopp on Forest analysis, formation options and more

The Reds travel to the City Ground for the Premier League’s lunchtime kick-off on Saturday, aiming to register a fourth successive win in all competitions.

Read a summary of Klopp’s chat with the media at the AXA Training Centre below…

On his reaction to Steven Gerrard departing Aston Villa…

I’m very sure he will come back from that. I’ve known him seven years in Liverpool, even with not meeting very often for different reasons; he was in America, then when he was in the Academy we obviously could create a bit of a closer relationship and I always followed him obviously. We had a little exchange this morning but nothing too deep or not a long conversation. I can imagine it’s disappointing for him because of the ambition he had and the things he wanted to achieve with Aston Villa. That’s obviously not cool. But I don’t think we have to worry now about Stevie. How he said himself yesterday after the game, he knows the game long enough and these kinds of things can happen.

How always in life, we all get knocks here and there – it’s all about how you respond. You all know Stevie still better than I do; he always came back and he will come back from that, no doubt about that. Things like this can happen. A lot of great managers out there had to leave their previous clubs for different reasons, some of the best did that quite frequently during their career and showed up somewhere else, learned from it, found a better situation, whatever. He will be back 100 per cent. But now I hope actually that he takes a bit of time for him, because since he finished his career he was pretty much working all the time, if I’m right, so maybe use it now a little bit for himself, to recharge.

On whether he will be on the touchline at Forest following his red card against Manchester City…

I cannot make any decisions – we just follow the process, the completely normal process. In this moment, I expect being on the bench tomorrow yes, but I don’t know 100 per cent. But I think. It’s the normal process. We are not now too used to it but we have enough people who know how it goes and we did everything we had to do.

On his analysis of Forest…

A lot of things are clear. The atmosphere will be outstanding, I’m 100 per cent sure. I like that as an experience, to have it as well; because it’s one thing to talk about because everybody tells you, and one thing to experience yourself. But of course when we faced them last time they were full of confidence, they were really flying and we felt that. It was a well-trained team, which they still are, but in that moment all the pieces fell in place pretty much. That’s different this season but that makes it even more difficult because now the spirit will be at 100 per cent, they will fight for everything, they want to change their situation and that’s what we have to expect. Yes, line-up-wise Cook was there, I’m not sure if he played that night. Johnson played definitely, Yates played if I’m right, some others. A lot of different players now on the pitch, that’s clear, we had all the images, all the pictures, we could see who he will probably line up. He has a lot of options as well, especially up front, he can play different players up front. But in the end, it’s a football game and we have to make sure we can bring through our stuff.

On when Naby Keita will be ‘back in full flow’…

Before [the World Cup]. It’s not a pre-season like five or six weeks. The thing is, what we can do in rehab with these tough muscle injuries, they do everything apart from team training. So you cannot replace team training; they do football work, they run more than we do in training sessions, they have to. But with nothing in rehab you can replace a football session; if it’s a small-sided game or whatever, it’s a completely different intensity to everything you produce in a rehab. That’s why I say now the football part of the pre-season starts. Physically he could probably now run a marathon when he starts on Monday, but that’s not helpful because he needs to do other movements. As long as we can give the boys time to recover fully and get as fit as possible, we always try to do that. The problem is when you start with injuries in a season then the boys who come back very often have to play too early because there are no other options. In this case I hope now we can do that, we can give him time until he can play. But maybe next week I tell you Naby Keita starts, I don’t know, we will see.

On Curtis Jones being available again…

You cannot stall or stop Curtis’ progress, but yes, it was a tough one. Freak injuries actually – finger in the eye, stuff like this, crazy. This now, nobody knew where it was coming from, it came out of the blue, stress reaction. But with young players these kinds of things happen, they are all growing and Curtis obviously grew still then. But it’s perfect to have him back, he is an exceptional player, an exceptional talent. In whichever system we play he can play different positions, which is very helpful. So it was for him very important to get the game time [against West Ham United]. But then you can see, again what I said, you cannot replace football training; so it’s like, ‘Where do we go? Where do I have to go in a game?’ He didn’t play for [the] U21s, we just brought him in again after a long time without regularly playing and you could see there’s still space for improvement, but that’s normal. But it’s perfect having him back and hopefully from now on having him back will be very helpful for us.

On how the change to 4-4-2 is helping Liverpool’s performances…

Stability, closing gaps we left open the weeks before – not on purpose, it just happened, we played for quite a time a specific system a specific way. And when you get used to things you lose a little bit the desire for the detail. And because it was so well-tuned, let me say it like this, how we defended, how we pressed or how we did different things, little things can change a lot. That’s why we had to change a big thing and to start thinking new about it as a group, and not telling him and telling him, ‘You do differently’. Because it’s always a row of different things that happened then.

That’s why we had to do it slightly differently. It’s actually not a big difference. It’s a change of responsibility slightly, it gave us so far more stability in different moments. Will we always play like this? In the last game now, to get stability again we changed to a 4-5-1 in the last few minutes, so that’s possible still. It all depends to who is available, who is fit. When we started the 4-4-2 we had two more strikers available, it feels like long ago but it’s only like 10 days ago that we had two more. So we have to stay open for all different possibilities what we can do and then we make decisions about that. It’s about what is best for us and what is the worst for the opponent. That’s pretty much how you try to set up, that’s what we always did and will do.