Can I just start by asking about Dejan Lovren? How is he?
So always you don't know exactly, but it looks not too serious.
It looked like a little cramp. He felt something, told us,
said he could go till half-time for sure, wanted to have treatment then and carry on.
We said no and stopped it there. That's the status quo,
you have these kinds of things in this moment of the season,
similar to what Gini and Adam Lallana had, not serious but serious enough
to keep them out, so now we have two days to make sure they can go again.
That's what I think in the moment, but I don't know 100 per cent.
Apart from that, was that close to a perfect afternoon?
It was, 100 per cent. On the other side, I think Eddie had his press conference before me?
I really feel for him, because you can lose against us obviously, that can happen,
but then losing [Nathan] Ake and [Callum] Wilson on a day like this
is of course a major blow.
We scored wonderful goals, had more chances, did really well.
We were really uncomfortable to play,
and from the 3-0 on, we controlled the game absolutely.
Nothing really happened anymore,
the players didn’t like it too much to be really loud in these moments.
I didn’t want to see any unnecessary risks because when you lose the ball
it’s not a problem in football, but it’s not a time for players to chase constantly,
players running for a counter-attack, I didn’t want that.
Maybe it was not the most exciting but it was necessary.
Yeah, it was an absolutely super performance, super individual performances,
and the team performance was just really mature and professional.
That’s what we needed today.
At the moment with this busy fixture list that you have,
the Premier League is the big one we know,
is it just about ticking over while all these other competitions are going on?
PHONE VIBRATES
- Not mine. - I reckon it's mine.
I like it - "Princess Leslie Loo."
LAUGHTER
Sorry, I wouldn't have said that, but... Congratulations.
My Lord.
Look, it will not happen every...
We had so many games which we had to chase until the last second
because we were 1-0 down, it was 1-1 or whatever,
and now when you have this really rare, comfortable situation 3-0 up
you should really control the game.
We had it a couple of days ago [against Everton] when we were 4-1 up
and made it exciting again with a bit of unnecessary lack of concentration,
I would say, so we had to work much harder than it would have been necessary to at 4-1.
But that’s it, so we have to do different things to win football games
and today this was the thing we had to do, and the boys did it.
How I said, wonderful individual performances,
the obvious ones like Naby, who was great; Mo, absolutely strong.
There were so many really, really good players
but especially how we controlled it from midfield with Hendo and Millie,
that helped a lot.
Joe Gomez, after a while out of the centre-half position
looked immediately really natural.
All that helped and that’s what you need to win a football game.
And Mo was magnificent today, obviously fully fit now,
which is quite a bonus, isn't it?
Oh, absolutely. It's long ago that he got that knock,
you carry things like this with you when you have game after game after game.
So, yeah, he now looks 100 per cent.
That's your first clean sheet in 15.
Yeah.
I have forgot how it feels, to be honest, it's great!
We should have them more often.
It was the most-used word in the dressing room by the boys -
‘clean sheet, clean sheet, clean sheet’.
Obviously everybody was desperate for that - now we have it, so let’s have it more often.
The next game where a clean sheet would be useful is already around the corner,
against Salzburg on Tuesday.
So...it feels good.
Is it like trying to be like Scrooge at Christmas, give nothing away to anyone?
We don't think about... Christmas is after Qatar. Wow.
I cannot think that far ahead, sorry.