The odds are in Jürgen Klopp’s favour for the 5.15 at Aintree having picked The Last Samuri in Liverpool’s sweepstake for the Grand National. They appear against him for the 3pm at Stoke given his team’s injury count, preparation time and track record against the lower half of the Premier League field. He is heavily backing an away win at the Bet365 Stadium, however.
Liverpool’s prospects of Champions League qualification have received little encouragement since their comfortable defeat of Everton in the Merseyside derby. Bournemouth’s 87th-minute equaliser at Anfield on Wednesday further underlined Liverpool’s defensive frailties and inconsistencies when facing teams in the bottom half of the table, against whom they have dropped 21 points this season.
Sadio Mané has since been confirmed as requiring knee surgery and will miss the remainder of the campaign. Philippe Coutinho has been told to stay away from Melwood because of illness and the waiting game continues over the injuries to Jordan Henderson and Adam Lallana. Klopp’s available players may need lifting in the dressing room before facing Stoke City.
“That will be easy,” said the Liverpool manager. “Because I am confident. I feel confidence in this moment because I know about football and I know what is possible and I know what it’s not about. The only thing we have to forget, if you want, is that we are Liverpool and have to play like Liverpool. We have to be a real challenge for them. That is what we have to be. We can be this.
“That is how most of the teams play against us – defend as good as possible and then use the situations to create with this. That is how we will play, 100%. You can win football games with each lineup. That is the nice thing about this game. That is what I know, I feel and for sure will say to the players over the next 24 hours.”
Klopp expects a typical high-intensity game at Stoke and claimed the style of Mark Hughes’s team has continued to progress this term. Their midweek performance at Burnley, that ended with Charlie Adam playing long balls to Peter Crouch and a defeat that stretched their poor run to four wins in 17 matches, suggested otherwise.
The lack of preparation time between Bournemouth and Stoke also troubles the Liverpool manager. Roberto Firmino, he admitted, has been “overplayed” since returning from injury but Daniel Sturridge has had only three full training sessions having recovered from a hip problem and is unlikely to start. Marko Grujic, the highly rated signing from Red Star Belgrade, is pressing for a place following his fitness issues but otherwise there has been little time to revisit the set-piece problems that have reappeared in recent matches.
“This week it is more difficult,” Klopp said. “We had a session today, yesterday the players who played against Bournemouth were not involved. We spoke about the game of course. They knew what didn’t work out and what was the mistake. That is all. It is about talking in this situation, we cannot train it.
“Stoke it is clear – tall players and the tallest if Crouch is on the pitch. We did well in the home game. Yes, we conceded the goal and they could have scored a second that would have made the game more difficult. But they know also that we are really difficult to play. I don’t think Stoke are thinking: ‘Oh, thank god he is not involved and he is not involved, so now it is an easy game for us.’ We will be hard challengers.”
No date has been set for an operation to repair Mané’s damaged meniscus but Klopp is certain there is no prospect of the influential Senegal international being rushed back. He said: “I felt he was lucky that not more happened but we are close enough to the end of the season that it will be pretty much impossible to play again this season. He will get a longer break and will be ready for next season. That is the only good news.”
Having called on Liverpool to learn to win ugly against Bournemouth, and their remaining games in order to clinch a top-four finish, Klopp could take some consolation from Wednesday’s performance even if Joshua King’s late goal altered the complexion completely. He believes it was a game Liverpool would have lost earlier in the campaign.
The Liverpool manager explained: “Most of the times this season we have usually lost games like this but we came back and the second half was absolutely OK. It was good. We created chances. I know everyone was talking before about how we miss Sadio Mané and we do miss Sadio Mané but he doesn’t help us too much in defending and we created enough chances to have scored more. Again, around the second goal, Sadio would not have been too much involved in defending so the influence of missing Sadio was not too big. That’s why it felt like it did at the end. It could have been good. It could have been the perfect game in terms of the result, a bad start, coming back at this stage of the season with a sick Phil and a tired Roberto, all that stuff. It could have been the perfect result but unfortunately between perfect and difficult to accept – sometimes it is only a second.”
