Jota Klopp
Jurgen Klopp has dismissed fears Sadio Mane is struggling with a crisis of confidence as he backed the Liverpool striker to rediscover his scoring touch at Chelsea.
Jurgen Klopp said: “Sadio is not a problem with confidence, but the momentum finishing-wise is not there at the moment, you can see that. Otherwise Sadio is playing well. Actually, there’s a funny story. On Friday morning one of our analysts knocks on my door and says ‘boss, can I have two minutes? I actually made a video to show Sadio how much he contributes to our game and how good he is in these moments and these situations. Obviously the intention was to show that he should not be too worried that the finishing isn’t there at the moment, but he’s still an incredibly important player for us. That’s actually the view we have on it. As a striker, pretty much all have to go through this kind of thing. It’s happened to Sadio before, he came out of that and scored for us incredibly important goals and I’m pretty positive that he has a good chance to score one on Sunday. After that, he is then away for a few weeks, then he is coming back and we can talk about all the things.”
Mane scored twice in the 2-0 win at Chelsea last season and forced the penalty from which Mohamed Salah equalised when the teams drew 1-1 at Anfield back in August.
Jurgen Klopp added: “For this game now, it’s all fine. He is too important for us that we would only think about these kind of things (the goal drought). You have to take these kind of things from time to time and it will be good again. We work on it football-wise, but it’s not about talking and making it bigger than it is. We missed other chances as well (against Leicester), but we all know Sadio has finished difficult situations off for us in other moments. They’re human beings, that’s how it is.”
Klopp confirmed on Friday that three first-team players, along with a number of coaching staff members, would miss the trip to Stamford Bridge due to positive coronavirus tests, although a further round of tests on Saturday produced no fresh cases among the squad.
