Everybody seems to be focused on the possibility of Liverpool moving into the Top 4 on the EPL Table with a win vs.Bournemouth, but Jürgen Klopp is not focused on that aspect of the match, only beating the Cherries away from Anfield Saturday afternoon. The boss addressed that, the confidence of the squad and the importance of keeping clean sheets when he met with the media
All the media wanted to talk about was the possibility of Liverpool moving into the Champions League. But Klopp preferred to only focus on beating Bournemouth, which he says will be a difficult task.
“(Champion's League) that's only a little side story because the main thing is going to Bournemouth and playing a game there and not calling the points before you have them,” he said. “I'm much too long in the business, so the last few days [I have watched] a lot of Bournemouth football. The way they play, stuff like this, can be really uncomfortable for each team and only in the last one against Arsenal, [who are] in a really good moment, everybody saw how much they had to fight and stretch luck, if you want – a late winner is always a bit lucky as well, even when they deserved it”
One of the reasons Liverpool have been able to climb the table is the fact that they have kept 4 straight clean sheets in Premier League play. The one aberration was the Champions League defeat to Real Madrid.
“That's the basis for everything,” Klopp said. “The way you defend gives you stability to create and to attack, and that [Real Madrid] wasn't very helpful. I said it now before, and I understand 100 percent that for a few days at least it [the 7-0 versus United] was a massive story, for us not so much because, again, [I'm] long enough in the business knowing the performance is super-important to us because that's really something we have to build on and use.”
With Liverpool's recent run of success, it's only natural that the club is super-confident right now. They just have to guard against overconfidence.
“There's no better mood-booster than a good game before,” Klopp said. “Yes, of course you see that. We had consistency, if you want, in the league now in the last five games but we spoke a lot about it, confidence is like a fragile little flower and we have to make sure that we keep that, and we have to understand in the right way. I loved the goals we scored because it's not likely that you always finish the situations off. You can have seven, eight chances in a football game, even against United, but that you finish them all off and score, that's really unlikely. But the way [we scored the goals], there was everything involved – there was good play, super counter-attacking and what always was there was really, really good defending before, so winning balls back if it was high up the pitch in a counter-press situation. And these kind of things, they bring you consistency. There's so many games to play and, what we said before, we have to chase pretty much everybody, and that means tomorrow [at] Bournemouth and that's what we'll try to do.”
Everybody is excited about how the Reds are playing recently and with good reason, but Klopp tried to bring everyone back down to earth a bit during his press conference. He warned that despite their record, Bournemouth pushed Arsenal to the limit in their last match and they very well could do the same to Liverpool.
He admitted that moving up to the top 4 was a part of everyone's thinking but only a small part. It's good to see the boss so focused when media and supporters may be looking ahead.
