Press conferenceJürgen Klopp's Tottenham preview: 'We have to stay focused, aggressive, greedy'

The Reds return to home soil on Sunday seeking to build on a positive Premier League run that has yielded consecutive victories over Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and most recently West Ham United.

Klopp spoke to the media during a press conference at the AXA Training Centre on Friday morning, where he discussed his side's form, the qualities they must maintain against Spurs and more.

Read a summary below…

On the consistency of team selection in recent weeks…

So, a couple of things. We didn't change not because we won the game before, we didn't change because we set the team obviously slightly differently up and want to give the boys the chance to find some rhythm in that, to get used to it, to get used to different things. That's reason one. Number two is I said the ticket into this team will always be the readiness, or from now on again the readiness, to defend and to counter-press and I liked a lot of that what I saw, and if you say that you have to give the credit for it as well, so you can buy the ticket again, if you want.

But, I have to say, what it created as well is a situation in training where the boys who didn't start showed properly up, so we could have changed quite a lot because they really knock on the door, which is good. The main difference is we have time to train and if you have time to train, all of a sudden everybody can show up. Because usually if you say training is as important as the games that's true, but in a normal week with three games you have recovery where only the guys train who didn't play the day before, the next day is second-day recovery for the guys who played and the other boys do a little bit more, and then you have one training day in a long week and that's not a session that should be that intense.

So, a couple of reasons. I liked big parts of the games, not all of it of course. Nottingham [Forest], I think around the set-pieces that looked really not cool but that's something, how I said after the game, it's difficult to prepare for that because nobody can throw in like Niakhate and nobody in our training session will fight for the ball like Nottingham Forest did; I would want to avoid that otherwise you have injuries after a set-piece in training. So, that's it, that's the reason pretty much why we didn't change.

On qualifying for European football for next season…

We take what we get, that's how it is. It's not that we started the season and said if we qualify for the Europa League it would be fantastic but the season taught us a few things. And that's absolutely fine. If it's Europa League then it's Europa League, absolutely fine. For what we qualify is not for me so interesting. I want to create a basis that we qualify for the best possible scenario pretty much, so squeeze everything out. I want to play the best possible football – if we get nothing for that at the end of the season then we created that situation earlier in this year. But this part of the season we have to use or we have to be just really focused on the game coming up, that's in this moment Tottenham. Try to win it, try to play in a convincing way, try to be uncomfortable to play against, all these kinds of things. And whatever happens until the end of the season, these last seven, eight, nine, 10 weeks then will be very important as well for the next season.

On preparing for Spurs...

Last night they played a similar system or the system they played now more or less for a while already. In general, I think the mentality boost, whatever, that's clear that it will come, and the second half last night helped definitely. This game could have gone either way – they could have lost it in the first half but they could have won it in the second half. They had a massive chance before United scored to [make it] 2-0, that could've been the equaliser, so that's how football on the highest level is. It can always go either way. More difficult? How I said, I watched last night, I think most of the players who will play against us played in that game as well, so that's what we prepare for.

On finding consistency...

It's, for me, too early to speak about consistency. For me, winning three is not consistent. It's good but can only be the start of something. It's about consistency you show in performances, even more than in results. I know in the outside world it's the result but, for us obviously, it must be the performance because that's what we work with. I'm happy with that in the moment because in all the games, as different as they were, I saw a lot of things we want to see in the games and that's then really good. That's really pleasing for the coach inside – that these things are still possible. Yeah, that's good.

But then the opponent requires different things what we have to do. We want to focus on us – and that's what we do – but we cannot ignore the quality of the opponent, so we have to be ready for that as well. And there's always something to improve, and that's fine and that's what we try to do as well now. That's it. I'm absolutely OK with the moment but it's not that I already trust ourselves that much that I say, 'Ah, that's it now. We are out of the woods.' Because this season gave us a few lessons I didn't want to learn but I learned. So, we have to stay super-focused, we have to be super-aggressive, angry, greedy, whatever. Show that the most important prize in football is the three points at the weekend or midweek, whenever we play in the next Premier League game. That's all we have to be focused on and, yeah, I hope we can show that.