ROUGH AND GRUMBLE? NOT MY REDS

Liverpool suffer from tough tactics but Klopp says: We don’t get mad, we get even

BY

JURGEN KLOPP has warned teams who rough up his star players that Liverpool will retaliate through their football.

Mo Salah (right) and

Sadio Mane have been targeted by opponents this season.

Senegal star Mane has also had to cope with defenders trying to provoke a reaction to get him sent off. They will have seen Klopp haul him off the pitch three times in the last year to avoid a red card.

But rather than cut up rough themselves, Liverpool will destroy opponents with the quality of their football,

Klopp said. And he even suggested the headline the Mirror should use. “The headline is: ‘We pay back with football,’”he said.

“It has been going on a long time, even when it was not so obvious to the outsider.”

Mane’s old club Southampton will very likely have special plans for him at Anfield today but Klopp said he has already spoken to the winger, who has seven Premier League goals this term.

“Oh yeah, we have spoken,” the Kop boss said. “You can see so clearly that opponents go for him because they want to wind him up. “Sometimes opponents will be so aggressive with him. For instance, against Flamengo in the Club World

Cup final, Rafinha targeted him because Sadio had caused him problems when we played Bayern Munich. From the first second he was really aggressive and constantly niggling at him, fouling him and telling him to get up, that kind of thing.”

But Klopp, who revealed how much he ‘hated’ substituting Mane after he withdrew him against Atletico Madrid earlier in the month because the Spaniards were trying to rattle him, is very confident the in-form Kop star can keep himself in check.

“Sadio is now of an age where he is not that emotional any more,” he said. “We all need emotions. Sometimes we control them well and sometimes not so well.”

Mane scored the first goal when Liverpool beat Southampton 2-0 at Anfield in May. At St Mary’s four months earlier, Saints won 1-0 thanks to a goal from Liverpool old boy Danny Ings.

Klopp, whose team beat Porto in the Champions League on Wednesday, has almost a full squad to choose from, with only Harvey Elliott on the long-term injury list. Roberto Firmino and Joe Gomez are close to a return.

SHAKE IT OFF Klopp says Mane has learned not to get wound up by rivals