- Good afternoon. - Hi.
Jürgen, it's going so well for you, a great unbeaten run currently,
but you're not top of the league incredibly, just how good have you got to be this season
to finish top of the pile ahead of Chelsea and Manchester City?
You've got to be at your brilliant best, haven't you?
Yeah, but that’s pretty much the case for all of us, not only us.
This is just the standard of the league and to be -
not now at the end of October,
but in March, April or May - in that area of the table,
that means you have to perform on an incredibly high level
and to be incredibly consistent and all these kind of things.
In this moment we don’t know if we will be,
so that’s always the thing you can never be sure about,
and that’s why it’s so important that we had a good start.
We had a good start so far, but obviously other teams had good starts as well.
Nothing happened, really, in the table -
obviously some clubs feel that they came up a bit short
in this early part of the season, but we all know that can change pretty quickly
and we try to be as consistent as somehow possible.
For that, we need to be ready.
For example, for tomorrow, which is one of the trickiest games in the Premier League
because of the work Graham [Potter] is doing at Brighton and the way they play.
That’s just the Premier League, there is no game which you can take a little bit easy.
Not at all, you have to be always at your absolute best.
I often wonder whether your job is getting easier or more difficult.
From the outside looking in, you have a couple of 5-0 victories,
it seems that you wouldn't want to change a winning team,
but you do it and seem to do it to everybody's satisfaction.
How are you managing to keep everybody satisfied in that regard?
I don’t think that’s possible to be honest, and I don’t think I did it!
You should ask all the players in the squad.
The thing we have to do is win football games, especially when you play for Liverpool.
When you are in football you learn early that you have to accept
the decisions a manager makes, and my team is doing that obviously.
That doesn’t mean that they are always happy about the decisions -
they just accept them.
The job for the player is to be always that determined, that good in training,
that in the moment when you come in, you are really influential.
That’s the deal and that’s the deal in each football team in the world,
and that’s the case here as well.
I don’t try to keep them happy.
Yes, I want them to be happy but I want them to be angry as well
when we play an opponent who wants the points - our points, if you want.
It’s just the things we do over the weeks and over the months
and that’s the situation we are in.
Nothing happened yet; what is it, matchday 10 now?
Come on, there are 28 after that to come, so obviously nothing happened!
It’s just a really OK start so far, but even in the start we had our downs,
maybe not result-wise too much but we had moments
where we were all not happy with,
so we have constantly things to improve
and that’s the only thing we are concerned about
and not that we won games with a ridiculous result or whatever,
where you think, "OK, how can that happen constantly?"
It will not, and we are not silly enough to think that.
To win a football game, first and foremost you have to make sure
that you are ready to defend, and that’s what we try to make sure for tomorrow again.
All the rest is how you can build on that, and we will see how we can do it.
We know you have to make at least one change from last weekend,
because James Milner is not available,
but how are Naby Keita, Fabinho and Thiago?
Naby Keita looks good; we were all surprised,
but he was obviously lucky so I think he will be ready.
With Fabinho it doesn’t look that good, it’s a bit more complicated.
Not too complicated, but complicated enough to keep him out again, probably.
I still wait for last news, but he was not in team training yet and that is never a good sign.
Thiago was in team training for the first time yesterday.
We did a session where he could be part of pretty much the whole session,
[but] that doesn’t mean he is ready to play a football game, unfortunately.
We will see what we do with him, but he is closer than he was last week - much closer.
Now we have to see what we do with that.
Afternoon, Jürgen, how are you?
Hello. I'm good, and you?
Fabulous, thank you!
You touched on how tomorrow is going to be one of the trickiest games this season,
of course your side are aware of the dangers this Brighton side can pose.
Given your stats so far,
you're unbeaten, six clean sheets and averaging three goals a game,
what kind of challenge are you expecting this time around?
I'm not sure if you saw the Brighton-Manchester City game last week.
So, it looks like from the scoreline a pretty clear thing, and maybe the first half,
yeah, City was really good.
But I think two goals in the first half were counter-attacking goals,
and then when you look at the possession, I think it was 52-48 if I’m 100 per cent right,
but it was a big one for Brighton.
That’s a football-playing side and not just playing football, they are a real threat.
They try to create, they defend well, I think they didn’t score yet incredible big amounts -
I think nine goals - but they conceded only nine and four of them
in the last game, which was a really strange one from a conceding point of view.
I think there would have been a shout that the first goal could have been a foul on the goalie
maybe and then you never know how the game will be.
I saw the second half as well and they were incredible.
To keep the ball like they did and pass the ball like they did against City
is a really difficult thing to do, and they did it.
So we know what they are capable of, but we are not City
and we play obviously slightly different and, yes,
that’s what we want to do as well.
We want to cause them problems and, yes, we lost the last game against Brighton here
so that’s another warning sign - not that I needed it, but it is.
But the big difference, obviously, [is that] Anfield will be packed
and that helps us usually.
But not alone, we have to be really good
and we need the people with the right understanding tomorrow.
This is not a game where you dominate an opponent or stuff like that;
they will have their moments, that’s can't be avoided.
That says everything about the quality of Brighton.
They will have their moments, we have to run a lot, we have to close gaps,
we have to be really spot-on defending-wise
and then obviously with the ball as well.
So, it will be a tough one, but I’m looking forward to it
and I couldn’t respect more what Graham is doing there,
I am really a big admirer of his work.
It was always difficult [against Brighton] since he is there,
and I have to say he is a top-class manager.
Nothing else to say.
Quite a few managers seem to admire his work.
You mentioned a few moments ago how you have this selection headache
across many areas, I just wonder,
with Konate's performance against Manchester United,
is that one more selection headache for you
in terms of who you feel is best to partner Virgil van Dijk?
I wouldn’t call it a headache but a few decisions I have to make, obviously.
But thank God - it’s always a good sign when you have to make decisions,
because it means you have options.
Really bad times are when you don’t have options and the decisions are pretty much
in front of you and you have no influence on it.
So there are some [decisions], but not too many obviously,
and not too difficult, and it’s always about who looks in the moment
the most likely to help us to win a game.
This decision, I make already for a few years
and I will do it this time as well, and hopefully again it will be the right one.
Good morning, Jürgen.
Pre-pandemic, your team went almost to March unbeaten,
everybody thought you were going to be the next Invincibles,
and I'm not suggesting that right now,
but you are the only unbeaten team left in the Premier League.
Can you compare this team and that one from 18/24 months ago
in terms of their form, and how much better do you think this side can still get?
I think the team didn’t change too much, right?
Gini is out, that’s clear, but all the rest should be pretty similar.
Yeah, Ibou is in now, Diogo is in now, Thiago -
unfortunately not available - but is around.
I don’t actually think about these things -
"Are we better than 18 months ago?"
It's not too important, you have to be as good as you can in the moment
and, yes, we have to improve and, yes, there is space for improvement,
we know that. I know how it sounds but the world is a bit like this:
you win 5-0 against United and everything is perfect, but it was not.
It was not.
United had clear-cut chances which we gave them,
and we shouldn’t rely on luck or Ali or stuff like this in these moments,
so we could have done better.
That’s how we spoke at half-time, being 4-0 up,
because it’s necessary.
I told the boys, "Now, in this moment it’s really important that you believe me:
"we have to play better, otherwise we open up the game for them
"because they score one, they score two, whatever."
Things like this can happen.
We are not worried about that, it’s just that I saw in the first half
we gave too much away, and that’s the things we have to improve.
And not only in that game, we have to improve it in general.
Of course on the other side, when you do offensive stuff
you have to finish the situations off, and there are moments, obviously,
where it clicks and there are moments where it is not clicking.
So far it clicked in a lot of moments
and that’s why we have some really impressive scorelines,
but we don’t expect that to happen all the time
and we have no problem with winning a game 1-0.
Absolutely not, it’s a bit more nervy obviously, but it’s still OK,
and that’s what we have to be ready for again.
Where we have to improve and then be stable and consistent is defensively;
how we work when the opponent has the ball.
Actually there is no reason why somebody should get through
if we do it really well, but because we are human beings always things can happen.
But even for that we need to have a solution so the next one can sort it.
That’s something where we can 100 per cent improve.
Offensively we can as well,
but that’s more difficult when you see the goals we've scored so far.
- Hi, Jürgen. - Hello, Carl.
Adam Lallana, when you first came to the club and introduced the pressing side of the game,
how important was he and did he set the standard?
Not only at the start, until the end.
I miss Adam still, to be honest.
We obviously don’t have plenty of sessions during the week
because we play that often, but Adam set the standard from the first to the last day,
and that was really impressive.
What I loved about him [was] a football player with the technical skills he has,
and then [also] this working mentality, is really rare.
I think we all agree, if Adam would have been a little bit less often injured,
he could have been on still another level - and it was already great.
So, one of the best players I ever worked with, an absolutely incredible person as well.
I am really looking forward to seeing him again.
Jürgen, you've touched on this already today,
about keeping players happy who are not in the team,
and Joe Gomez is probably in that category,
just over 12 months ago he was starting every game alongside Virgil,
then we know the injuries happened, it's been difficult for him to get back in,
played really well in midweek.
Is it even more difficult for someone like him who was used to playing regularly
and is now struggling to find his way back?
Yeah, absolutely.
That’s absolutely not easy, that’s clear, but it was always clear
that we had to react in our situation and we had to bring in a centre-half.
I think everyone agreed on that and then it was always clear as well that in the moment
when all four or five - and really, I always have to mention it,
when you saw Nat Phillips playing the second half against Preston,
that’s a completely different player to the player he was a year or two ago.
He's a top-class centre-half and he is not playing as well.
Joey didn’t play yet but that’s how it is after the long injuries and stuff like this.
Then we decided for Joel, which made absolute sense,
now Ibou came in in a situation.
We have to deal with Joey, in the beginning especially,
we try to deal still with the intensity.
Now we are not even half through the season and we talk about these kind of things.
Hopefully no one gets injured through the year, but that’s a footballer’s life.
You have to be on top of your game for the moment when you come in,
and in that moment you have to convince everybody, and that’s how it is.
The boys get on really well with each other, all five of them.
That’s really nice to see, so they respect each other a lot,
and we will need them, and we will need Joe.
Joe’s qualities are incredible, we all know that,
we saw that in a lot of moments on Wednesday.
But it’s just now we have only top-class players in that position
and that makes it a bit harder when you are not in the line-up in the moment.
But it was always like this in football - the only thing you can do
is to keep working really, really hard and your moment will come.