Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
PREMIER LEAGUE KLOPP DRIVEN BY WEMBLEY WOES
German will use painful memories of stadium to inspire a Reds revenge mission
FOR Jurgen Klopp, the pain of a second crushing defeat at the home of football is still there.
Wembley is hardly the happiest of hunting grounds for the German coach.
He not only lost the 2013 Champions League final there with Borussia Dortmund, it was to their most hated Bundesliga rivals, Bayern Munich.
Last season, it was worse in a way.
His Liverpool team were taken apart by Tottenham, prompting one of the toughest decisions of his managerial career when he took off defender Dejan Lovren after just 30 minutes.
So, almost a year later, the equation is simple. With the talk around his imposing team now turning towards the title, he wants them to draw on that hurt, that humiliation, to show Spurs – and the world – what they are made of.
He said: “Yes, we feel we would like to use it a bit like, ‘Strike back, go there and really show our real strength’, and of course it is like that.
“We watched a video after. We worked on all things. We talked about doing the right things and how the little things can kill a game or can turn it your way.
“But we have to show it again, again and again. We defend well but there were a few moments in the season where if they shot it was in. That’s not too cool.
“The message was we had to be much better in these details, then we could win at Tottenham.”
And he is fully aware of the threat posed by Mauricio Pochettino’s team, adding: “You can’t go to Tottenham and have an average day and still get something – you get nothing for an average day there.”
The reason, he says, is simple. Spurs are one of the best teams in Europe, and if Liverpool’s standards slip even slightly, they will be punished, just as they were so painfully last season.
So his message to his team will be emphatic – forget all the accolades about how good they are and go to Wembley prepared to do the dirty work.
He said: “It will be interesting, very interesting, just not thinking too much about how can we pass, how can we play . . it must be a proper fight for both teams. The Tottenham manager knows that as well.
“In a big stadium, with a big pitch and all that stuff, if we use it, it’s good, don’t use it, not so good. Last year we made it a bit too easy for them, because we lost the ball and they only had to play one pass behind our lines.
“We should be much better organised this time, we were much better organised than that in other games, so we should use that and we can get something.”