Jürgen Klopp met with the media Tuesday morning ahead of Liverpool's match with West Ham United at Anfield. Among other topics, the boss discussed injuries, his respect for the surging Hammers, his red card and gives the supporters praise for creating a magical atmosphere at Anfield in the 1-0 victory over Manchester City.
Klopp provided updates on several players. Diogo Jota will be out until after the World Cup. Calvin Ramsay and Curtis Jones are close to returns while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlian, Naby Keita, Ibrahima Konate, Joel Matip and Luis Diaz are still several matches away from returning to the pitch.
The boss is obviously impressed with West Ham's performance as of late. After a slow start to the season, the Hammers are unbeaten in their last five fixtures.
“They caused us a lot of problems, here and there [at London Stadium] all the time,” Klopp said. David (Moyes) is just doing an incredible job and now brought in new players, really quality players, options to change.”
“My English is not good enough to express how important it [the result] was,” Klopp said. “From all different perspectives. It was the performance we needed. It was the way we had to defend. It was the way we had to commit”.
Klopp received a red card in the latter stages of the last match, but he is unsure of when the league will assess the resulting 1-match suspension.
“I think I will be there (versus West Ham) tomorrow because nothing really happened yet,” Klopp said. “I don't think that something will happen tomorrow, to be honest, a few hours before the game. I still think I should have dealt differently with the situation, which I actually do usually. I explained after the game: in this moment you could not bring me in this mood, no chance. But the whole game led to that maybe a little bit, the way it went.”
Klopp has been around football long enough to know that no opponent in the EPL is an easy mark. That's why the manager is placing such a high importance on this game while showing West Ham the respect they obviously deserve.
He thanked the supporters for their passion in the last match while he obviously regrets letting his passion boil over, and receiving the red card. It is a little surprising that Klopp did not at least hint who would replace Jota in the Starting XI, but I guess time will tell.
