KOP KIDS NOW MERSEY MEN
Jurgen’s youth movement will be on duty again tonight... but have ‘nothing to prove’
JURGEN KLOPP says his Liverpool kids have nothing to prove after their heroics in winning the Carabao Cup Final.
The Reds boss will turn to his youngsters again for Liverpool’s 200th home FA Cup tie against Southampton at Anfield after Ryan Gravenberch and Wataru Endo made it 13 players on the injured list.
Liverpool beat Chelsea on Sunday with teenagers James Mcconnell, Jayden Danns and Bobby Clark taking a starring role and Klopp says they should not be judged against Southampton.
“First and foremost, they don’t have to show anything,” he said. “The story of Sunday was one of the best football stories I’ve heard of, and it was 100 percent right.
“Our boys played in youth teams and the Under-21s, stuff like this, and only came up recently to train with us.
“They had nil experience, but a lot of talent and they just showed that. There’s absolutely no pressure, all these boys have to do is enjoy what they’re doing.
“It’s possible that a few of them have to start, we don’t know that yet, and if they do, they will do the job.”
Klopp also urged the Anfield crowd to be patient with the youngsters if things don’t go well. He said: “We all have to help them, celebrating the right things, not moaning about wrong things.
“Please don’t go ‘Oh!’, it’s horrible, 60,000 people going ‘Oh’ – that’s really not cool.
“I can tell you, I played and when 12,000 people did that, I felt it from my head to my toes. That’s not too cool.”
Klopp claims Gravenberch will miss at least two games with his ankle ligaments injury and says Endo is also receiving treatment. He will make late calls on Darwin Nunez, Mo Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai and has told his players not to focus on who is missing.
“It’s a very bad moment because there are so many injuries, but what we can do is just ignore who we are missing,” he said. “That’s why I loved the Luton game so much and why I loved Sunday’s game.
“We just ignored it and just thought about how can we set up a team who is difficult to play against. That’s what we’ll do again.”
Liverpool are going for a Quarduple after lifting their record 10th Carabao Cup and Klopp says the kids have made this possible.
“I’ve said it plenty of times, without the kids, we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “The amount of games we had meant that everybody had game time. It helped that we shared game time from the beginning.
“That’s why I’m more than happy with our squad.”