Klopp Talk: “We Had Not The Best Week”

The one vital hope coming off the back of the 4-1 loss to Tottenham last weekend was that we would just win against Huddersfield. And the one vital fear was that we’d bottle it somehow and end up with another draw or, lord forbid, another demoralizing loss to a promoted side. Not that Huddersfield are to be underestimated but such is Liverpool’s luck in general. Thankfully, the former happened rather than the latter, and Liverpool were able to make amends for the loss with a 3-0 win on Saturday. It didn’t completely silence the despair from the previous match, but it definitely helped. Manager Jürgen Klopp spoke about Liverpool’s reaction on Saturday to the press following the match.

“We had not the best week as you can imagine - it’s not that we don’t take the situation really seriously, it’s really important for us. Tottenham was the worst game we’ve played in this season so far and you cannot ignore it, but you have to work with it and that’s what we did,” Klopp said. “It can happen, especially with the style Huddersfield played today - a rather defensive style and we were a little bit stiff.

“It was not fluent, we had too many players behind the ball, it was clear we wanted to give them no opportunity for counter-attack and stuff like this, but you don’t need seven players behind the ball to protect the counter-attack. That’s how it looked a little bit in the first half, so it was not too difficult to fix at half-time.

“We [worked on] it during the week already; the positioning where we have to be so it’s more difficult for any opponent to defend it.

“You could see immediately in the second half really, we had more players between the decisive lines and so it was more difficult for Huddersfield to defend.”

The second half was really where the Reds came alive, spurred into action by Daniel Sturridge’s 50th minute, and 100th career, goal. Much of Liverpool’s previously disappointing matches could be pegged by chances not capitalized on and Klopp was eager to point out that was not the case on Saturday.

“We had more chances, but it’s a big relief, to be honest, because the pressure was there,” he continued. “There is no doubt about that. I could hear that people didn’t like the first half too much, I know it’s hard work but in the end probably nobody remembers the first half because the second half was really much better.

“It helped a lot today - three goals, three points, clean sheet, very, very important.”