Jürgen Klopp has said it is better for Liverpool to perform than dream of challenging for the Premier League title as he prepares to hand Loris Karius the No1 spot against Hull City on Saturday.
Liverpool’s impressive start to the season – featuring seven points from trips to Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea plus a comprehensive home win over the champions, Leicester City – has left their manager “optimistic” for what lies ahead although he believes the team can improve. To that end it is understood Klopp informed Karius and Simon Mignolet on Friday that the £4.7m summer signing from Mainz will be in goal for Hull’s visit to Anfield.
The Liverpool manager had claimed, “There is no No1 at this moment” as the Germany under-21 international neared a return having broken his hand in pre-season. Nevertheless, Klopp’s decision is a severe setback to Mignolet who, barring a brief spell out of the team under Brendan Rodgers, has been established as the first-choice goalkeeper at Anfield since arriving from Sunderland three years ago.
Liverpool are seeking a fourth consecutive victory with their manager keen to guard against complacency amid outside talk of what his team can achieve this season. “I am quite optimistic,” said Klopp. “The only thing I really can say is the biggest mistake you can make in life is to think about the finish before the next step and we have a lot of steps and a lot of things to do.
“It is not about dreaming. Everyone can dream of something. That is nice. But it is really about performing. I am not a person who celebrates before anything is decided. I’m fine, it is OK what we did until now. It is not like I’m surprised and thinking, ‘Oh my god, I thought it would be much worse’ or ‘I thought it would be much better’. It is what we have to do. We need to be competitive in each game, really competitive. We need to concentrate, use our skills, show our quality; all of that stuff. Then we will see what we get for doing that. We are completely fine with our quality but we have to show it all the time. We know a few teams around know a little bit about playing football too. A lot of things can happen between now and the end of the season.”
Liverpool have scored 19 goals in seven games this season in all competitions with their only reverse coming at Burnley. But their manager says it is premature to believe his team have found the consistency that has eluded them in recent campaigns.
Klopp added: “The question is what is consistency? Is three games consistent? We should talk after the season and see if it was consistent or not. I’m pleased but until now we did what we think was the minimum what we should have done. Of course we had a little bit of luck in the first half at Arsenal but then we had 30 minutes that decided the game. We could have won against Tottenham but we could have lost at the end too. The header of Alderweireld brought a brilliant save from Simon.
“It is the percentage of good moments in the games that I’m happy with but we can still do better. The Derby game was really dominant. I thought afterwards: ‘Was I ever in my whole life where I won against a second division team in Germany or here and had so little problems and I still was not happy because we could have done much better?’ No, I wasn’t. We have big expectations on ourselves. We really want to perform but we want and need all the help we can get.”
