Both teams are going through a difficult phase at the moment and are languishing in mid-table positions – not something many expected to see from them.
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Chelsea and Liverpool were involved in a goalless draw on Tuesday night in the Premier League. Both teams are going through a difficult phase at the moment and are languishing in mid-table positions – not something many expected to see from them. With the gap between them and top four ever expanding, this game seemed to be a must-win. However, both sides were not able to find the decisive breakthrough and the match ended as a stalemate.
After the match, Klopp was happy with the positives that he can take from the game. Asked whether it was a ‘point gained or two dropped’, Klopp, as quoted by their club’s website, said in his post-match press conference, “Gained. It’s an away game; this was not the most spectacular 0-0 I ever saw. I saw two of them – Liverpool v Chelsea – last year, the two finals, [they were] absolutely insane.”
“Very similar teams I would say, but completely different football because of a different level of confidence for both teams. This was the fight we have to show tonight, this was the way we have to start our development again. We cannot now hope – because we did a couple of things that were absolutely not like they should have been – that we fixed it overnight.”
Klopp then spoke about the changes he made to the team ahead of the match. “I decided to make six changes, that always against a good football team can be a problem. Three of them in the last line as well, which is obviously a real challenge for the players and we could see in the first few minutes they went direct, playing behind the last line, [and] we had a few problems there. Apart from that, they had their chances after we lost balls in moments where you just cannot lose balls. It’s now a problem we keep a little bit, that’s not good, but the recovery after that, the desire to sort the situation, I liked. Nil-nil, not the most spectacular one but a step for us. A little step, but a step in the right direction,” he explained.
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The attention then shifted to the top four race in the Premier League. Klopp was asked if there was still a chance of Liverpool qualifying for the Champions League places. The manager replied, “I don’t know if there is any chance, for that we must win pretty much all the games and the other teams must lose a lot of games. It’s not in our hands, I cannot say, what can I say about that? It’s not important. If you would be only motivated on the highest level if somebody tells us, ‘Oh, you have a chance for the top four…’ Then if we are not fourth, then I want to be fifth, if we are not fifth, then we want to be sixth, so that’s what I want to be. For that we have to win football games, because in the moment I don’t even know where we are exactly. Eighth? Seventh? Ninth? I don’t know – it’s not interesting.”
“We have another 10 games to play and the next one is Arsenal. Not the other nine, I am not interested in [those games]. But the next one is Arsenal, so if we are difficult to beat against Arsenal we can win this game. If not, Arsenal will just go over us and then we will see. With one point, the steps, how I said, are not massive. If you win a football game, all of a sudden three points for one game; wow, things can look different. But for the moment we have no lack of goals, or lack of where we want to end up; we want to be as successful as possible. But that means for each weekend, or for each midweek game, like today, we want to win it. I saw that tonight and for that, I am fine.”
