Considering the injury crisis Liverpool have faced this season, Klopp praises his boys for helping them reach where they are currently in the league table.
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On the back of the injury crisis Liverpool have faced this season, manager Jurgen Klopp praises his players for being in top four positions in the Premier League table. With multiple defenders including star centre-back Virgil van Dijk has been out for most of the season, the Reds are still in fourth and a win against Crystal Palace on Sunday can guarantee them a top-four finish. When asked how highly he would regard a top-four finish this season during his pre-match press conference, Klopp replied, “Yes, it means as much to me, it means as much to me.”
“It is clear, we could not have come into this situation if the boys would not have shown this kind of character, their very special character. Life is like this: if you are not performing on your top level, people question your character from time to time. In the moment you stop, you get back on your feet, all of a sudden the character is there – but the character has not really changed.”
“It is just sometimes we suffer from things we don’t have a lot of influence on and that’s why things go the wrong way sometimes, but I never questioned the character or mentality of this team. It was a tough one, it is a tough one, and, again, nobody wants to talk about this season before we play the last game, but that we are in the situation that this game is so decisive is absolutely great news, absolutely great news.”
Klopp is focused on coming on the correct side of the result on the final day in the Premier League on Sunday. “It is always like this: if you qualify for a final, everything is perfect but then we have to play the final, so don’t forget that!” he added. “We experienced both ends of playing a final as a club, as a team, and we want to be on the positive end of this final. For this, we have to focus on the final.”
He was all praise for the players for creating “something special” despite the difficulties they faced this season. “I don’t know in how many years we will judge our time here, when we look back and stuff like this, and this is part of our story, part of our history. Definitely. For a long, long time, we thought it looked like this would not be a year we would talk a lot about in the future,” he added.
“But the boys made still something special of it, I have to say. Really special. Yes, of course, that brings you together even more, definitely. Celebrating the big wins together is nice and will stay forever, but going through tough periods makes you even stronger, of course. In that time we didn’t get distracted or however you would say it. Nothing got in between us.”
