Jürgen Klopp has issued a staunch defence of his Liverpool midfield and denied it is a weak link in a team that, he insists, delivers enjoyable, creative and winning football on a consistent basis.
Liverpool spent more than £90m on Naby Keïta and Fabinho in the summer but neither midfielder has established themselves at Anfield so far while Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Georginio Wijnaldum struggled as a unit in the midweek Champions League defeat at Paris Saint-Germain. Klopp maintains it is merely a matter of time before Keïta and Fabinho prove their worth, like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Andy Robertson before them, and, in a feisty press conference on Friday, was unhappy with the post-PSG focus on his experienced midfield trio.
“I don’t see any problems with midfield, to be honest,” said the Liverpool manager before Sunday’s Merseyside derby, when Henderson will be suspended. Klopp shook his head when asked later whether midfield was a weak link in the Liverpool team. “It is not the case, it is not the case,” he replied.
Klopp conceded that midfield support to Liverpool’s front line could improve “in specific games” and attacking fluency would inevitably suffer as a result of working on defending as a team. But he insisted a return of 33 points from 13 Premier League games, plus an exhilarating run to last season’s Champions League final, would not have been possible with a weak midfield.
“For me it is quite strange,” said Klopp. “When everything is brilliant and we score goals you always ask about defending and how can we fix that? We fixed that, kind of, and it always happens that the first step costs you a bit of fluency and creativity. That is completely normal. We still have to develop, that’s what we do. Bringing one player in would change everything? That is bullshit and you know that. We have the players for it. We have to win football games.
“Really, with all the things I saw in this country football-wise, if people cannot enjoy our football then I can’t help them. We are creative. Creating is not a problem. In the end, in the games we won we were always the better side. That’s pretty rare. Not one lucky game.”
The Liverpool manager claimed his team’s start, not his midfield, was the problem at PSG and not even Barcelona could have shown their creative best when 2-0 down against the French champions. “PSG are one of the best teams in the world,” he added. “They didn’t look like it because we caused them a lot of problems. We had to chase the game and it is not that easy then to be creative.
“If Barcelona plays in that game they are not creative. We had to fight back. It was not a brilliant game but it was a big fight and we lost it 2-1. And after that you ask me about being creative in midfield? We could have changed the game had we started differently. Then 2-0 wouldn’t have happened and the pressure on them would have been even bigger. That was the problem of the game, not being creative or whatever.”
