Jürgen Klopp has said it is imperative Liverpool remain angry and the Anfield crowd holds Hull City in the same regard as Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund or Chelsea for his team to maintain their impressive start to the season.
The Liverpool manager made an impassioned appeal for patience from supporters before the match against the newly promoted side on Saturday. Liverpool have won their past three fixtures, scoring nine goals in the process, and have taken maximum points from Arsenal and Chelsea away plus champions Leicester City at home. Their only setback to date was a 2-0 defeat at Burnley, a result that again demonstrated Liverpool’s tendency to falter against the so-called lesser lights of the Premier League. But Klopp insists there is a need for consistency not only from his players but in how Liverpool supporters view the opposition.
“We feel good, we feel strong and we love to work together,” Klopp said. “We need to be ready for each game, maximum concentrated, greedy, kind of angry, all of the stuff you need at the highest level of sport. We have to be angry against Hull because they want our points – that makes me angry so it’s easy for me.
“I have heard the rumour. We have to think why so many people think we have big problems against ‘bus parking’. I am not sure Hull will do this and I cannot remember a lot of space against Chelsea or Tottenham. It is very important to find the right words for this. I think we all can improve – the team, the coaches, the manager and the crowd. It is about expectations. If you create a chance against Chelsea, it’s positive. If you miss the chance it’s still positive because it showed we know the way. But if you miss a chance against Burnley, it’s seen as a negative: ‘Oh my god that should have been a goal.’
“That’s what we have to learn: to take the games as they are, we cannot rate or value teams before the games and say ‘against them it should be easy’. No football game is easy. Why should it be like that against a team people think we are stronger than? That’s a process we have to learn.”
Klopp claimed he could “100% guarantee” his players do not have a complacent attitude against the Premier League’s smaller names. But he admitted the team share the crowd’s frustrations when chances are missed and that does affect their performance. The manager said: “We all know that you play at home at 3pm and it is so different to playing Dortmund on a Thursday night but, come on, let’s do something, all of us. I spoke to the players about it as the only difference I see is we get frustrated after missing chances. We lost a little bit of our nerve.
“At Burnley we conceded an early goal but it is only a goal. In football we will have this situation a lot of times in our lives. Stay patient, stay positive, that is really important. Don’t frustrate yourself after five minutes, missing a chance is missing a chance. It is the same against Barcelona, Real Madrid or a smaller team in Germany. That is always the same. That is the experience and togetherness you need. You have these situations you need to go through together and think ‘That is normal, let’s try again’. That is what we need to do.”
Loris Karius and Simon Mignolet are vying for inclusion against Hull after the former, a £4.7m summer signing from Mainz, made his competitive Liverpool debut in the EFL Cup win at Derby County in midweek. Klopp insisted he is still considering his choice of goalkeeper for Saturday.
“I will tell them before the game for sure,” he said. “Listen, I really understand this, but let’s go through a few different ways in which we could see it. Do we say: ‘OK, Loris had the game against Derby. Was it a real game for a keeper? Not really so give him a home game’. What would this mean for Simon? Or it could mean nothing? We could say there is an international break coming up so give Loris a home game and Swansea away and then both have had the chance to show what they are. But it’s not a test.
“We have two very strong goalkeepers and we think about how they can perform and how their specific skills can help the team. That’s what I have to decide. I accept there are different circumstances over the keeper’s position but in the end it’s 100% positive – Liverpool will have a very strong goalkeeper between the posts on Saturday.”
