Press conferenceJürgen Klopp: The more top-class options we have, the better it is for LFC

Sunday sees the Reds resume action in the Emirates FA Cup fourth round, while Salah and Mane will meet that evening when Egypt face Senegal in the Africa Cup of Nations final.

Read a summary of Klopp's discussion with journalists ahead of the Cardiff game...

On having two players in the AFCON final, and whether he'll have to look after the player who loses...

Not really. I'm not the guy who thinks everything will be a problem. So, both players [have had a] successful tournament, and we will see the situation next year [at the] end of November, early December exactly the same and everybody is coming back from the World Cup. There is one winner, and maybe two or three winners, and all the rest lost, so that's the world we created for these boys. Thank you for asking, usually nobody asks about how they will deal with it. I can deal with it, that's no problem, I will help them with all I have. That's why I said when they come back, we have to talk and we will see if they need anything, if they need a day off or two days off or whatever, these kinds of things. They are our boys and we will do everything to help them through all the different situations, that's how it always was.

How I said, it will be exactly the same with the World Cup. I think the World Cup ends and we go into Boxing Day or something like that – very interesting. I'm pretty sure then it's the World Cup finish, you win the World Cup, then you come back, play 26th wherever, play the 28th and all these kind of things. Let's talk then about it. Then we have the experience from the Africa Cup and can tell you it was easy or not so easy. But so far we obviously don't have this experience or didn't have this experience too often.

On whether it would be beneficial for Salah and Mane to go straight back into club football...

These two boys are real warriors, so they are constantly ready, they're both not worried about holiday, about days off and stuff like this. I never heard them ask anything about, 'Can I get a day off?' Never, they never did. So especially with these two boys, it's pretty simple. I know they want to play immediately but together with them we have to find out how much sense it makes, so we will see that. You can imagine both want to play against Leicester, both want to be involved, want to score goals and want to win football games for Liverpool, that's how it is. But it's Friday [today] and five days until we have to make that decision. I didn't think too much about it because the boys will come back and then we talk. That's it.

On Salah and Mane becoming more influential in the Liverpool dressing room...

Experienced players are very influential, absolutely, but we have to make a difference. I have my meeting and stuff like this but the pep talk before the game when Millie and Hendo and some others, Robbo, are more vocal before the last few minutes, as a not-native speaker I'm not very vocal because it just doesn't make sense. In this moment each word has to hit the nail and not like 'er, er, er', [and] these kind of things. That doesn't work. My English is getting better and it's the same for Sadio and Mo obviously. I saw again leadership skills a lot from Naby, and it took a while for him until he spoke good enough English to understand us all – but meanwhile, his English is really good. Now they are there in their home language, are the most important players, best players of their countries and they take the role – that's impressive. I was never in doubt that they have leadership skills, definitely. But we have different groups and they have different things to do in the different groups. They fulfil that role pretty impressively.

On the competition at left-back with Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas bringing the best out of each other...

I'm not sure competition is exactly the word I want in these kind of moments. So, we are one big team, we are one squad. If you play for Liverpool, you have a lot of good things you can expect and some things are different when you play for another club. So here at Liverpool, we have to win each game, that's pretty much how it is. Unfortunately, we don't do that but that doesn't mean we are allowed to lose the next one as well. These boys over the last few years did an absolutely incredible job without, how you say, competition on different positions. They forced, they stretched really their limits – absolutely unbelievably, the development they had. We didn't bring in different players to create a competition. We bring in players to have solutions in different situations and that means now that the boys have to deal with it, that's the job they have to do. It means you are in the first line-up, so run your socks off and play as good as you can, as long as you can. And if you can't do that anymore, then another player has to be there who can replace you and do the same job – if possible, even better because he's fresher. And that's the idea behind.

So, a season is really long and we suffered so much from injuries in the last few years and hopefully it will not be the case now anymore, but if it happens we should be better prepared. If it doesn't happen, then we have a situation where players will be on the bench who expect to play and players not in the squad who expect to be on the bench. So these kind of situations you have – never for long but sometimes we will have that completely normal situation. We had it before – not too often unfortunately – and we will have it in the future. Footballers are used to that. To go back to your question, if there is a player who can play the same position as yourself in a quite impressive way, yeah, you better perform! Because my job is not to stick with the boys – as much as I like them, as much as I owe them, as much as we went through together. My job is to line up the best team for today, not for yesterday. The more options we have, the more top-class options we have, the better it is for the club. That's hopefully the situation.