Klopp Talk: “If One Game Would Change My Mind, Then I Would Be A Real Idiot”

The clamoring amongst supporters for the club to spend more money on defense seemed to reach a fever pitch this weekend when Liverpool lost to newly promoted side Burnley at their home ground. Jürgen Klopp and Alberto Moreno both have gone on the defensive this week leading up to the match, with the boss saying that he is happy with Moreno’s performances and the depth we have in his position. To prove it, he started James Milner in the back, only swapping him with the Spaniard in the second half. Many supporters largely believed that the sale of Christian Benteke is what was delaying another purchase but Klopp reasserted his position following the defeat.

“If one game would change my mind, then I would be a real idiot,” he said after the match on Saturday. “If that was the case, how could I be here? Will I spend? I don’t know. We will see.

“I know you would all buy a left-back but a midfielder? We had Emre Can on the bench, Lucas Leiva was not here. Emre has had a back problem but he warmed up OK and he could be on the bench. Lucas was not here, and you would ask for a hard midfielder?”

It’s stuff like that that makes you really love the guy. And in the face of a defeat, it’s always easy to look and see problems where maybe there were none. It’s easy to blame goals conceded on defense from an outsider’s point of view, because that’s what we know defense to be, and most of the time it’s right. In a game with 80% possession and no goals scored on our end, there has to be something more to it.

“The whole game is explained by the two goals,” he added. “We can say that they scored two and we could have scored five. We can ask if it’s fair that they had two good moments, we had 500 and it was 2-0. But it’s our job to get the result which we deserve. And obviously on Saturday we deserved a defeat.

“I know we discuss this and we always talk about it. But it’s not a defending problem, it’s an offensive problem. We lose the ball in the wrong moment and bang, they are gone.

“But it’s the second game. We have 36 left, that’s a big number... I thought actually after 75 minutes that Burnley would vomit on the pitch, but they didn’t. And we lost concentration, and didn’t force them to make these defensive movements again. It’s not an off day, just an experience that we didn’t want.”

It’s always easy to get carried away after a loss, especially after one as dismal and disappointingly familiar as yesterday. Especially as the transfer window starts to close and the opportunity to throw some money at the perceived problem dwindles until January. We have a manager, though, who is confident in what he’s doing and the path he’s putting the players on. That counts for something, and a lot more than what we had this time last season.