Klopp praises Shaqiri despite early withdrawal
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp admits it was not easy to take off Xherdan Shaqiri at half-time after the Switzerland international had played such a pivotal role in the convincing win over Southampton at Anfield.
The 26-year-old, on his first start since a £12million summer move from Stoke City, had a hand in the Reds’ first and third goals, but still had to be sacrificed at the break because Klopp felt holes needed to be plugged.
“No, it was not easy, to be honest. It’s my job to sometimes deliver news nobody wants to hear,” said the German.
“I said to Shaq at half-time that I’d never taken a player off at half-time after such an influential half.
“He was not injured, but I wanted to control the game, go back to our normal formation and that helped us.
“That’s how it was at half time, but he’s a fantastic boy, so there was no problem. I explained it to him, usually I don’t explain substitutions, but I thought it made a bit of sense.
“I would have done the same if it had been 2-0. That was the plan. We saw that we had a few problems.”
Klopp changed his formation to 4-2-3-1 to accommodate Shaqiri in a No.10 role and it paid off, as his deflected cross was turned in by Wesley Hoedt for the opener and his brilliant curling free-kick against the crossbar presented Mohamed Salah with a simple close-range effort for the third.
Klopp had dismissed talk of a Salah goalscoring crisis with the Egypt international having drawn a blank in his past three games and the majority of Anfield was willing him to score every time he got in the penalty area.
Either side of those, Joel Matip scored his first at Anfield, and his first anywhere since November, as Southampton were pulled apart by a Liverpool side still nowhere near top gear.
A sixth successive league victory – a seventh in all competitions – maintained a 100% record and took Klopp’s side back to the top of the table with an improved goal difference.
Even at this stage that is important as Chelsea, at West Ham today, had entered the weekend top courtesy of having a goal difference one better.
They still have some way to go to match the club’s best start to a campaign, though, as the 1990-91 side won 10 successive competitive matches.
“It’s just good to have him. You saw the free-kick, it was outstanding. What a ball,” added Klopp. “The whole team was not used to the system and, as a new player, usually you struggle most, but he didn’t. He tried everything, the only problem was defensively.
“Offensively, it was a good idea, but we have to work a bit more on that. He was good, I liked it.”
Klopp allayed injury fears over Virgil van Dijk after the centre-back was taken off with a rib problem just before the hour mark.
The Holland international was unlikely to play in the midweek Carabao Cup tie at home to Chelsea anyway, so will have a whole week to recover, before the Premier League encounter between the two sides at Stamford Bridge.
“He had already, before the Paris St-germain game, a bruised rib, which is very uncomfortable, and he got another hit there,” said Klopp.
“It’s not cool, but should not be too serious. He said he couldn’t shout any more, so that’s obviously 60% less of his level.
“He should be absolutely okay, hopefully. I didn’t hear anything different.” Southampton manager Mark Hughes admitted his side struggled to get a handle on their opponents and went behind too early.
He said: “We aren’t the first, we won’t be the last who aren’t able to cope with the attacking threat they have.
“We were unfortunate with the opening goal, a ricochet off a couple of players and it ends up in the net.
“You obviously want to start well at Anfield and that was a setback. I thought 3-0 was harsh. Second half was clearly a damagelimitation act.”
Hughes, who managed Shaqiri at Stoke, backed his former player to succeed at Anfield. “I had the benefit of Shaq’s free-kicks, unfortunately it went against me,” he added.
It was a something of a bizarre game as Liverpool were nowhere near their best and Southampton, despite looking dreadful, had some threatening moments.
However, it was a third loss in six league matches as boss Hughes failed to improve on his record of just three wins in 24 career league games against Liverpool, having never won at Anfield.