Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
KLOPP: MANCS FOR NOTHING PEP & JOSE
JURGEN KLOPP admits the flying starts by Manchester United and Manchester City have turned up the heat on him at Liverpool.
Table-topping City and United are unbeaten and
GERMANY’S 19th-century statesman Otto von Bismarck was nicknamed the Iron Chancellor because of his steadfast will.
And compatriot Jurgen Klopp is just as resolute when he insists he will not change his style to solve Liverpool’s problems.
Kopites are frustrated the defence remains suspect almost two years into Klopp’s reign.
The Reds have just two clean sheets from their nine games this season and shipped 10 goals in a winless four-match run.
Klopp understands the fans’ concerns and is working on making the team tighter at the back and more clinical up front.
But the Anfield boss insists it will not be at the expense of his trademark high-pressing, lightning-fast football.
A defiant Klopp said: “If you were to ask me, what do I prefer? Do I want my team perfect defending set-pieces, but don’t know how to play football or the other way around? I would still take this one.
“For me, it’s important I can help the players by staying really positive about this, plus changing the right things, plus including the right things.” Klopp is not blind to Liverpool’s defensive frailties and says they will only be solved by hard work on the training pitch rather than pithy words in his press conference.
Leicester’s opener in their 2-0 Carabao Cup win came because Liverpool did not defend the second ball well enough and Klopp believes they are too focused on dealing with the initial danger.
“If I talk a lot about it, I only create headlines, so I don’t want to talk about it because they don’t help us,” he said. “Klopp says this, Klopp says that. For me it’s important what work we do.
“We conceded a few goals from the first ball – cross, header. We sorted this better. We’ve a much better formation.
“But we can’t defend a setpiece with a 50-yard header, so there will be an opportunity for a second ball and it’s fighting for these balls we need to do different.
“Everybody wants to help and where the first ball is, often we come too close together, which means for the second ball, we don’t have a good formation.” Klopp feels Liverpool are adding to the pressure on their defence by not taking their chances, evident in their last three games against Sevilla, Burnley and Leicester.
“The difficulty of our situation is we really play well, but in the end we don’t score often enough so far,” he said.
“I think that’s a minor problem. Of course, it’s a problem, but you have to create these moments, you have to make chances. That says a lot of things work really well.
“At the beginning it was so nice, how fluent and creative we were. We are still fluent and creative, but don’t score and so that’s a big problem.”
Klopp also rejected claims his side does not have enough character to ride out difficult moments in games.
“They have proved it already hundreds of times,” he said. “It sounds like we have nil points and are the worst team in the league.
“Yes, we obviously have problems. We can make it more serious than it is, or we can take it like it is. Yes, we still have work to do, but that would be the same if we had 15 points.”