Klopp: How can Mo rediscover top form and confidence? He must relax and stay calm

JURGEN KLOPP has revealed how he is helping Mo Salah ensure a dip in form and confidence does not turn into a full-blown crisis.

The Liverpool manager knows his star striker is unhappy with his game so far this term after a recordbreaking 44 goals last season, knows he is unhappy at the chances he is missing that he would normally dispatch clinically.

But ahead of the match at Napoli’s intimidating Stadio San Paolo (Liverpool training on the pitch, below) the German coach also knows this is exactly the sort of cycle even the greatest finishers go through.

Klopp refused to detail exactly what he has said to Salah, but as a manager who has helped build and rebuild the confidence of some of the world’s best hitmen – like Robert Lewandowski – he knows the answer lies in staying calm.

“Be relaxed, completely relaxed, because there is no need for anything else. Completely relaxed. The quality is there and so everything is fine,” Klopp explained.

“My problem is if I say now that I spoke to Mo, then tomorrow all the people will be guessing what I said to him and that makes it much bigger. This is not information for here, it is between us, always. My interest is to have him in a completely normal mindset.” Klopp (below) paused for a second as he thought of the situation Salah faces. “Normality, is that the word?” he said with a trademark cackle. The Liverpool manager knows that Salah is suffering and said: “If you play tennis and your forehand is good and the next day your forehand is not there, you think ‘What is it?’ That’s how sport works. It is about your confidence. “But his game is really good. His last game was really good – he was in the positions but then the last two balls were not too cool, that’s all. “If the player is not happy with it – that is clear. If you have a chance, you want to score. Even if Mo had scored 30 already, it would be 31, so that is disappointing for a player, but that’s all. There is no difference.” The trick for Klopp now, as he did with Lewandowski when he first arrived at Borussia Dortmund, is to ensure that “normal” dip in confidence from last season’s miraculous high, is merely that. And he points to other great strikers who have the same questions asked.

“Forty-four goals last year, then you don’t score from the first day of this season – of course something changes,” he said. “That happens. If you don’t score 10 goals in your first seven games, then everybody asks if you can do it again.

“It is completely normal, all normal. Even they talk about this with Harry Kane. Now he scored two goals last week, but before that, he was ‘not even half what he was last year’ – that is what people were saying, stuff like that. “But even Ian Rush didn’t score 40 goals season after season for 10 seasons. That’s not how it works.”

Klopp will keep his faith in Egypt star Salah, 26, despite the brilliant goalscoring form of Daniel Sturridge, and will send him out against Napoli with a simple message: “They know. I didn’t score, I didn’t score, so next time I pass.

“But it is about judging the situation again. Can I shoot? Yes. Score.”