Jurgen Klopp paid tribute to Alisson Becker for a “sensational save” that preserved three points as Liverpool beat Fulham 1-0 at Anfield.
And the Reds manager believes the goalkeeper has been the club’s most consistent of the campaign as they strengthened their grip on fifth place in the Premier League.
Mohamed Salah’s first-half penalty was enough for the Reds to close the gap on the Champions League places to four points ahead of Manchester United’s visit to Brighton on Thursday night but Klopp’s team had Alisson to thank for keeping them in the lead when he denied Carlos Vinicius late on.
The Brazil goalkeeper got a firm hand to a shot from the Fulham striker to deny him and ensure Liverpool made it five wins from as many games as they extended their unbeaten run to seven matches in the Premier League.
Jurgen Klopp said: “Really pleased with big parts of the game. First half, controlling, creating, not finishing the situations off. We saw obviously a couple of their games for analysis reasons, their game against Manchester City, that City couldn’t create the chances they normally do. It was from counter-pressing and quick counter-attacks. So we were prepared for that. I couldn’t respect what Marco (Silva, Fulham manager) is doing more because they had to make five changes from the last game. Before that game they had injuries. It’s a really tough task. This team is set up in a sensational way. Caused a lot of problems but we could have scored more often. If you then don’t close the game early, you have to fight until the end. We needed Alisson, obviously. The last one with Vinicius was a sensational save and he was really happy about the clean sheet. More than anybody. Five wins in a row is super difficult. If it was easy, everybody would do it. We would have done it earlier. It feels like ages, ages, ages ago we did it. It probably is. Alisson was really touched that we kept a clean sheet tonight, it was that long ago he kept a clean sheet for us. Especially in that situation. For sure he is the most consistent player we have this season. That is good news. If we’re not in good shape and the level of the goalie drops as well, then we would have been completely lost. A lot of moments were really good tonight. But then there are moments when we still need to adapt to the set-up. Trent Alexander-Arnold cannot be everywhere. He cannot be in midfield and the next situation he is directly in the right-back situation. That has to be covered by Ibou (Konate). There were a few situations where Ibou was a bit too far away. They could turn and could attack. We have things to improve, definitely, but in a lot of moments it looked really good.”
