Jürgen Klopp summed up a hugely impressive 4-0 win at Leicester City that moved Liverpool 13 points clear at the top of the Premier League by saying: “My boys just played a very good football game.”
The newly-crowned world champions produced a display of awesome authority to comprehensively beat the second-placed Foxes at King Power Stadium on Boxing Day.
Roberto Firmino’s header put the visitors 1-0 up at the break, with James Milner’s 71st-minute penalty – the vice-captain converting with his first touch after coming off the bench – doubling the advantage.
By the 78th minute, it was 4-0 as Firmino slotted in Trent Alexander-Arnold’s cross before the right-back slammed in Sadio Mane’s lay-off to round off the scoring.
Read on for a summary of Klopp’s post-match press conference…
On how big a step beating the second-placed side in that fashion represents…
It was just a game against a really good football team. It is not about deciding whatever you were thinking about before it’s actually decided. It is already difficult enough to perform in the way you can win against Leicester in their stadium. How good they are, everybody knows, how dangerous they can be, everybody knows, and my boys just played a very good football game. Really, really completely focused, in most moments really good organised, if not then closing the gaps we created by not being in the perfect spot with our legs. Blocked shots – I don’t know how many shots they had on target tonight, probably not too many. And then playing football ourselves, so the first goal was obviously brilliant but the bigger chances we had before that but didn’t score from these situations, that’s how it is. After, the 2-0 penalty, it was a corner, Divock Origi came a second before on the pitch and I think if he’s not there then the defender probably sees the ball a bit better and can react maybe different. Millie came on a second before and could finish the situation, that helped. Third goal, worldie, just completely cool and composed: a super ball from Trent and Bobby with the super finish. And then Trent with the fourth with a super finish. Of course it was a really good football game, but we had to be good otherwise we would have lost here.
On whether there is currently a better full-back in the world than Alexander-Arnold…
I am not too interested, to be honest. We are not looking for one, let me say it like this. We try to create our own guys in the shadows a little bit of these boys. Neco Williams, for example, who looks pretty promising. He played a really good game, but not a perfect game. It was not perfect but it was really good and it was decisive and helped us a lot. We know how important these crosses are for us, how important these things are for us, so that’s absolutely exceptional. But I can’t compare because at the moment I watch pretty much only Liverpool games so I don’t see the others.
On how the 13-point lead makes him feel…
You only think what changes in the question is the number is different: it was 10, 11, now it’s 13. We actually don’t feel it, we don’t think about it, not at all. We didn’t mention it once before the game because it’s just not interesting. I can write the stories myself: the first story is that never before in the history of football, British football at least, has a team had a bigger lead and lost the lead. So that sounds in my ear negative, so why should we think about something like that? We are just focused on the next [games]. How I said, we play Wolves, Sheffield United, Everton, Tottenham, Manchester United in the next five games. That doesn’t sound like anything is decided in my ears, to be honest. We have to play all of them and we try with all we have to make sure we are ready. The number is absolutely not relevant to us.
On whether Liverpool have played better this season than tonight…
Yes, I would say so. We played an exceptional game against Manchester City, we played a super game against Arsenal and we’ve had a few good games this season. I am not sure if it was better, it was just different. For tonight it was exactly the performance we needed. I think a little bit less good and we would have had problems. We had no real problems in the game because the boys were really 100 per cent in the game and that helped us a lot.
On whether winning the Club World Cup has had an impact on the players’ mentality…
I don’t think so. It was an experience, an interesting experience. We decided long ago we would go there and in the moment we arrived we realised it is really intense. The time difference of three hours doesn’t sound massive but we are there to do sports, so it is. The light is different, everything is different. We really suffered so I was happy we could do it like we did it. Again, we tried everything to leave some energy in the boys for the games and that worked out. We had a lot of problems, with Virg and all that stuff, Gini not available, [so] the boys did really well. In the end, we will see. We made the decision a while ago, we don’t really think about the things we have now, like the Champions League, Super Cup or Club World Cup – we want to talk about that much later in our lives. We are in the moment where we try to win a few things and afterwards we can think about how it felt.
