Jurgen Klopp believes Liverpool have set “the benchmark” for how they must approach future Merseyside derbies after a 4-1 hammering of Everton at Goodison Park. The Reds secured their first away win in a derby for five years with a convincing performance on the other side of Stanley Park on Wednesday night.
Jürgen Klopp said: “Hendo was good! But with his skillset, he should be good. When you can train and play and you get rhythm and you have the quality of Hendo, then you can play good football games. Tonight, I think it was for him as well the best performance at Goodison Park. So we had obviously, since I have been at Liverpool, we’ve had to learn these kinds of things. We had to learn to play at Old Trafford and we had to learn to play at Goodison. And tonight we showed that we have made a really big step forward in our development and that is really good. It doesn’t mean anything for the future but it shows that this is now our benchmark and that is what we have to do to reach when we play these kinds of teams.”
Klopp also referenced the 5-0 win at Manchester United in October as proof of how his side have learned to control themselves in the biggest fixtures.
Jürgen Klopp added: “We are a very emotional football team but first of all, we need the right mindset and emotion is good but not the all the important thing. The two derbies for us against Everton and United are big games and we have to learn to keep ourselves calm and together if you like. We have to play our best football because I told the boys whatever had happened in the past [is the past]. But to be 100 per cent honest, there were not a lot of derbies at Goodison where I thought: ‘ah, we played a great game. Really perfect’. So there is some space for improvement and I wanted us to be really mature today. Aggressive? Yes, but in a football way. Angry as well, but in a football way. In moments when you counter-press you cannot do that without a bit of anger and greed because you cannot do that without that but there are moments when you just move the ball around their formation or through it and you need a different mindset for that and we had that tonight.”
