Klopp happy to win ugly after Burnley scare Kop
JURGEN KLOPP says he will be happy to see Liverpool play ‘ugly’ – as long as they carry on winning.
The Kop boss, who revealed Jordan Henderson will not be available for England next week, saluted his side after they came from behind to beat Burnley yesterday despite being below their best. Georginio Wijnaldum and Emre Can scored either side of the break to cancel out Ashley Barnes’ opener as the Reds earned a crucial three points in the top-four race. Klopp said: “It was the first ugly game we’ve won. When we are not that good, we usually lose.
“Yes, if we want to stay where we are, then we need to win football games and we can’t make the choice and say, ‘Yes or no, we want to play this way’.
“It is really good today that we could do it (win), even like this.
“We usually win good games, but the bad games and the average games we need to be challenging too. We were today.”
The Reds remain fourth in the table and are now five points clear of fifth-placed Arsenal and six clear of
Manchester United in sixth, but they have played two games more.
Kop skipper Henderson was absent for the third game in a row with a foot problem and will not be available for Gareth Southgate’s England squad.
The Three Lions boss will announce his squad on Thursday for next week’s friendly against Germany and the World Cup qualifier against Lithuania.
But they will be without Henderson, who will also miss Liverpool’s crunch clash with Manchester City on Sunday.
Klopp said: “The break hopefully is two weeks. We hope that will bring him back but there will be no game in this time.
“He cannot train, for sure he cannot play against City.
“Hopefully he can run in the second week of the international break and then we will have to see.”
Broken
Burnley remain without a win on the road all season and have collected just two points on their travels.
They visit Sunderland on Saturday to complete a run of four straight away games with seven points between them and the bottom three.
“It’s another ‘nearly’ for us and we have had too many ‘nearlys’ on the road,” said Clarets boss Sean Dyche.
“The main thing is to keep performing and if we keep performing like that things will come our way over time.
“It is a broken record but I thought we deserved something today.
“We were resolute in our defending, had a good tactical plan, scored a sublime first goal, had two or three other chances and ruffled their feathers.
“We deliberately made it awkward for them.
“I don’t search for luck, you have to make your own, but we haven’t had a big decision go for us on the road.”