Klopp Talk: It Was an “Exciting Game”

Sometimes, the journey absolutely does not matter. It’s the destination that counts. And when the destination is the semi-finals of the FA Cup next month, who really cares about how poorly Liverpool performed against Nottingham Forest this weekend. For the boss, the game was what he expected, even if Liverpool could have played better.

“It was [exciting], it was the game we expected, especially if you don’t use the chances and don’t play as [good] as we could have done,” the boss said after the match. “We could have obviously played better, but we should have scored in the first half. The situations they had were counter-attacks when we lost the ball, but apart from that we controlled it absolutely. As I said, if you score earlier it is a completely different game. If you score late-ish then Steve [Cooper] had obviously changed [tactics], very offensive, full risk and we had our counter-attacking chances, didn’t use them, didn’t play them out properly and it was 1-0 until the end.”

“All fine, all respect to Steve and Nottingham Forest, really. A top, top performance, really passionate, really well organised. In cup competitions we all know that, there is only one reason to be part of it and that’s to go to the next round. We did that in an atmosphere where everything was prepared to give us a knock as well, but because we were prepared for a fight we came through it and I’m really happy about that.”

Liverpool will be facing Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final, which gets us closer to another trophy, but also means yet another set of matches for an already exhausted team. Hopefully the exhaustion doesn’t set in until after we’ve won the FA Cup and maybe the Premier League and Champions League, too, while we’re at it.