Klopp welcomes consistency from maturing Liverpool

LIVERPOOL: Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp hopes his side’s Jekyll and Hyde nature is a thing of the past as they aim to avoid a European hangover at home to Bournemouth on Saturday.

Victory will take Klopp’s men another step closer to sealing a return to the Champions League next season just days after they booked their place in the semi-finals of the competition for the first time in a decade.

The five-time European champions thrashed runaway Premier League leaders Manchester City 5-1 on aggregate in two thrilling quarter-final performances.

Liverpool lead fifth-placed Chelsea by 10 points, although the reigning Premier League champions do have a game in hand, in the fight for a place in the top four thanks to a run of just two league defeats in 24 matches.

However, one of those reverses came a shocking 1-0 loss at Swansea just eight days after a memorable 4-3 win over City at Anfield, something Klopp is keen to avoid a repeat of.

“We mature constantly. The boys get more and more used to situations like that,” said Klopp after beating City for a third time in four meetings this season.

“If you could say something bad about us in the past few months, it is on a good day we can beat everybody and on a bad day we lose, (we) concede cheap goals. We work on that. We are still in a development phase, that’s how it is but already we are a good team.”

Vital to Liverpool’s greater consistency has been the presence of centre-back Virgil van Dijk.

The Dutch captain cost a world record £75m ($106 million) for a defender in January, but has lived up to his price tag in marshalling a defence that has conceded just seven goals in their past 13 matches in all competitions.

Van Dijk has brought a leadership previously lacking in Liverpool’s back line and has helped accentuate huge improvements in those around him such as goalkeeper Loris Karius, centre-back partner Dejan Lovren and inexperienced full-backs Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Liverpool rode out what Klopp called a “whirlwind” first 45 minutes from an all-out attacking approach from Pep Guardiola in midweek, conceding only once when Van Dijk claimed he had been fouled before Raheem Sterling set up Gabriel Jesus.