With wholesale changes in the middle third, it was unclear how the team would respond on the pitch.
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Liverpool have been one of the teams to watch out for this season after the Reds made an impressive start in all competitions. This has put Jurgen Klopp’s boys in contention for major honours. It is all the more impressive considering the overhaul they made in the middle of the park. Plenty of Liverpool players left the club and also joined them in the summer. With wholesale changes in the middle third, it was unclear how the team would respond on the pitch.
To Liverpool’s credit, they have done incredibly well till now this season. Their star centre-back Virgil van Dijk spoke about how the team has different players this season and how they also had to adapt their style of play this campaign. “Obviously there has been a transition of course, but also in the way we play. We have different players with different qualities and try to adapt a little bit in our football – and I think it’s working quite well,” he told TNT Sports.
The centre-back added: “What’s also helping is we have not many injuries, so everyone is pushing each other. And we have that coming from the bench. Obviously a couple of injuries now, but before that [not]; that was also key. At the end of the day, it’s finding the consistency. Everyone is playing on quite a high level and that’s the key to success hopefully this season, and let’s do it in every competition we are in as well.”
Liverpool will next have a couple of matches set to be played at Anfield in the coming days. Speaking about them, Van Dijk said, “It is only game by game by game, that’s how we approach everything. Try to stay fit and enjoy the moment as well. We play for one of the biggest clubs in the world – we are very privileged – so let’s show that, let’s be proud and enjoy the time together.”
Earlier, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp spoke about their hard-fought 2-0 Premier League victory over 10-men Everton in the much-talked-about Merseyside derby. “A difficult game. Even before the first whistle, I didn’t know 100 per cent how we would be ready for that. When we had the finishing in the warm-up Dom told me, ‘I actually never played a derby before.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Salzburg don’t have a derby, Leipzig don’t have a derby, Hungary has maybe a derby but the countries who would be a derby, we never played since I played international football.’ ‘OK, good, no problem, you give always 100 per cent so you are ready for the game’,” Klopp, quoted by the club’s website, said after the match.
He added: “So you don’t know exactly how it is, and I liked what I saw, besides that we should have finished situations off better. They didn’t even become chances but there were super situations where we had four-v-one, four-v-two counter-attacks and with the quality we have, we have to play a better last pass. That didn’t happen so 0-0, red card, changed the game again. Everton were not [in] that deep a block before that but after that they were obviously [in] a really deep block. We had to get used to that, that took a little bit too long for my taste.”
Klopp was also happy with how his players were ready to be patient in the second half before they scored. “But what was really important today [was] that we didn’t get frustrated in the second half with the fact that we didn’t score already. And I thought we did that really well, I saw that we were ready just to play to the final whistle, try it, and then we scored the first goal. The penalty, really well done by Lucho crossing the ball in that moment; a one-v-two situation I think and then still can cross the ball. And then late, 2-0, game finished,” he explained.
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