Press conferenceJürgen Klopp on Reds’ defensive record, title race and Salah durability

The Reds travel to Emirates Stadium on Wednesday evening hoping to reduce the gap to leaders Manchester City to a single point.

Klopp previewed the fixture in the capital by answering questions from journalists at the AXA Training Centre – read on to see what he had to say...

On whether it helps psychologically the title being in Liverpool's control more...

That's actually the best news but the only problem is that there's an 'if' in this wonderful information. For this moment it's like this and let's see which result we get tomorrow night and then we talk new. We said it last time and then you all tell me, 'Is it over now?' So, we try to win all of them, it's really difficult, but we try and then we will see. But in our hands, you can say it's in our hands, but it's still pretty slippery.

On conceding just four Premier League goals in 2022 so far and what he puts that down to...

We defend as a unit better than we did. So, of course, after pre-season and after the season we had, you gain confidence, you gain a feeling for each other again game by game. We were always a pretty good defending team but we had our moments when we conceded more or less out of the blue. It's pretty rare that we come under fire and they shoot 20 times and four times the ball is in. So, we had to learn again to deal with the situation being dominant in the team but they want to have counter-attacks and these kind of things, so how can we set up our protection? That's unfortunately not exactly like riding a bike, you can lose it a little bit over the summer and with the last year [when] half of our defence didn't play for ages. Now we are more ourselves and everybody knows again – they knew it before – but they now feel it again how important it is. We need and we have a clear commitment for defending first, so that's what we have to do just to make sure we don't have to score like six goals to win a football game. That's it.

On Salah's durability and him playing 171 of Liverpool's 180 Premier League games since arriving...

On top of that, there's a statistic – I don't know exactly who did it – that Mo is the one player with the least fouls against him – but not that he didn't get fouled, it's just we don't whistle. If you compare it to other strikers, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy how low his number of fouls is against him which the ref whistles. So it means he constantly has contact, going down and you have to go up again, and stuff like this. It's not only luck obviously because he's probably in since 9am – I'm not sure, have a look for his car. But he's very professional and very desperate to play each game. So when you ask him [about] the nine games and maybe I left him out once or twice so he didn't start the game, so these things are really hard for him. He tries to be on the pitch in training and in games if somehow possible.

On whether the 2018-19 title battle with Man City has any use this season...

We are so often in and around – unfortunately we only got it once – but how I said, it's the situation. Last year, same time, similar situation, just 20-odd points less. We had to win pretty much everything to have a chance. I had an interview with Lothar Matthaus in Germany and he asked me about Champions League and I was like 'How shall we do that?' But I really thought in that moment, no. But the boys made it. The year before, it was different, we had to go, go, go but it was then all interrupted. The year before, we got not nothing but not a lot for a massive finish in the season. So, it's not like the first time. It helps a little bit that it's not the first time because you know you can do it. But it was so incredibly difficult and we needed late winners and we needed goalkeeper goals and stuff like this – all these kind of things, that's what you need. That makes it so special when you have a long run with results because there's always a way to defend you, and some teams find it and sometimes they don't even have to find it because of other circumstances you don't score and then you have to still stay on track in the game and try until the last second. How I said, that's what we will do and we will see if it works out.