Klopp tells his Liverpool stars that squad rotation will be inevitable this season
Jurgen Klopp has warned his Liverpool players that squad rotation will be used more heavily this year as they target a first league title for the club since 1990.
Klopp’s side began the Premier League season in emphatic fashion yesterday as two goals from Sadio Mane and efforts from Mohamed Salah and Daniel Sturridge set them up for a 4-0 victory over West Ham United at Anfield.
But the German manager thinks that his squad will be hard pushed to challenge on all fronts again, having finished fourth in the Premier League last season and been runners-up in the Uefa Champions League.
Other teams already rotate their players regularly and Klopp said the fixture demands on the club meant it was a practice on the horizon on Merseyside too.
“It’s only the middle of August and then in September the games will come,” Klopp said. “The future of football will be rotation. We need to be ready and have that quality.
“I told the boys one or two could be disappointed but that will change, if they make the best of their time.”
Liverpool have not won a trophy since Klopp took over in October 2015 and the club’s last silverware came in 2012 when they lifted the League Cup. But Klopp was encouraged by what he saw was the continuation of a good build-up to the season in which they defeated champions Manchester City, Manchester United, Napoli and Torino in friendlies.
“We extended a really good pre-season into the Premier League,” he said.
“For us, it was not perfect, but really good. Nobody knows exactly how well you did or how worthy your pre-season is.
“Always you see things in pre-season against different opponents and in different moments, but now the Premier League is a proper fight and immediately today that’s the biggest change and then you hope as a manager that your team is ready for that.”
Despite the success against a side in Manuel Pellegrini’s West Ham who have also recruited heavily over the summer, Klopp was eager to highlight that there will be bigger tests ahead for him and his players over the coming months.
“West Ham will play for sure a good season, but they are not then the Uniteds, Citys and all that stuff,” he added.
“That’s how it is, they know that and we know that and we have to be ready week in, week out for all the different challenges.”