Jurgen Klopp has dismissed claims he has taken the cup competitions more seriously than usual at Liverpool this season. The Reds beat Chelsea on penalties last month to clinch the Carabao Cup at Wembley and will have another trip to the national stadium lined up if they find a way past Nottingham Forest in Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final.
Jurgen Klopp said: “Usually people question my tactical ability and stuff like this but never my attitude. My attitude didn’t change, not at all. If you look at my German history, most of the finals I lost – it’s still a big number – were the German Cup final. Obviously when you have the players available then it’s okay and you can do it, if not, you have to make changes where people say, ‘Why is he doing that?’ But we come to the point where, with all my knowledge, I ask the players for an awful lot until a specific point and then take them out. It’s now, [even] if they want, they should not be in the situation where they have to deliver again. That’s why we had changes. We said it before that we were not always unlucky but we had not the best draw as well. It’s not that we thought: ‘Let’s go to Chelsea away or United away’ – or Chelsea at home in a situation where we didn’t have players. So no, the attitude didn’t change, I always wanted to go to Wembley, it just didn’t happen. For the league games you can make changes and then for the FA Cup the players are available. You need a specific amount of senior players available that you can bring in the young ones but if you have to play only with young ones then it’s really tricky. We had to do that from time to time but it is then really difficult. The mix makes a difference actually.”
