Jota Klopp
Jurgen Klopp has admitted the irony of Liverpool losing to Leicester City after having their Boxing Day clash with Leeds United postponed was not lost on him. The German has repeatedly taken issue with English football’s festive fixture list since moving to Anfield in 2015, and recently voiced his concerns for player welfare when they are asked to play on Boxing Day and again on December 28th.
Jurgen Klopp said: “One of the guys who is constantly talking about we should not play on the 26th and the 28th, plays only on the 28th and loses to a team who plays on the 26th and the 28th. It’s a funny story, I know. It’s a strange game from our side. We were just not really ourselves tonight. We started okay. I didn’t 100% like the intensity, even in the beginning but, at the start we sometimes have starts like this. But then we lost rhythm and never really found it back. We had moments where we could have played much better. We needed some effort not to score tonight. We had quite a few chances. And when they scored the goal, it was clear we were under pressure. Crowd was there, great atmosphere. We were pushing for them but didn’t use the chances. We missed three headers and in the end I thought everybody was responsible for a lesser performance tonight and they got what they deserved. They deserved the three points. Tonight I didn’t like a lot in our football game to be honest. That’s not cool, that’s not why we do it. We have to do better and we have a few days to follow through, think it through, improve and go again.”
And when trying to explain his side’s performance, Klopp admitted Liverpool struggled to play against Leicester’s diamond formation on the night.
Jurgen Klopp said: “They played with a diamond tonight, at least for a while. It was hard. There is no system in the world which is perfect. That means you can use these kind of things. Especially in diamonds, if you fix the last line you can play and left of the six which makes it really tricky. It’s quite a challenge to protect because they had Maddison as 10 and Vardy and Iheanacho upfront. It doesn’t feel comfortable but you can play that. In these situations we should not take what is obvious. Like we have a ball free and we can cross and players are in the box. These kinds of things. We forced it a little bit too early. We crossed too early into the box in the first half instead of passing the extra pass. If you do that, all of a sudden the situation looks completely different. We tried to change that at half-time but for some reason it didn’t click tonight really.”
