You could almost sense the waves of relief coming from Jürgen Klopp as he spoke with the media following Liverpool's 2-0 win over Everton. The boss talked in glowing terms about the team's performance, the play of Stefan Bajcetic and the Cody Gakpo goal.
Klopp and legions of Liverpool supporters have been waiting for this kind of performance. Klopp admitted the play was not perfect, but it was much improved over past matches.
“Relieved! Yeah, that's it, that was the main feeling since the final whistle,” Klopp said. “Happy with the performance. It was necessary that we played tonight the game we wanted to play and not the game Everton wants to play. You cannot avoid that all the time but I think they didn't have an extremely high number of set pieces, so with all the aggressiveness you have to show you have to make sure you don't overdo it because each set piece is a massive threat and something they want to have, and I thought we did that really well.”
Stefan Bajcetic may not have scored or dished out an assist, but his strong play helped the Reds boss the pitch for the majority of the match.
“Pretty good,” Klopp said. “And we put him on a new position; you have to ask him actually, I don't think he ever played the position before. He came here as a kid as a centre-half, played now the six for us in a few games and tonight as an eight and in a lot of moments a double-six, did extremely well. It was quite a good performance, to be honest.”
Fans have been waiting on Cody Gakpo to score a goal ever since his arrival at Anfield. He opened his account on a pretty big stage, scoring in the Merseyside derby.
“He had a good performance as well,” Klopp said. “The way he set up the chance for Darwin Núñez, he had other moments like this where he came out under pressure and then there was a foul and we got a free-kick. He did extremely well under massive pressure in the centre. In the end, it was not the most difficult goal he ever scored, but it is exactly the goal each striker is dreaming of when it didn't happen for a while, probably. Both goals were, for both players, really important. The next one who could have needed something like that is probably Darwin; the chance he had was a really good one. Anyway, it was obviously Darwin with an insane run for the first goal and a super pass.”
Klopp is not the only one relieved by the win. I think everyone is. This match proved that even though Liverpool still has their struggles, it can also play top-quality football. Several players turned in solid shifts and the boss was quick to acknowledge that fact. Now let's see if Liverpool can follow up with an elusive road win vs Newcastle.
