Liverpool might still be far away from the top four places, however, the last two results could give them an unlikely boost to secure Champions League football.
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Liverpool registered an important victory over struggling Nottingham Forest in the Premier League. Despite being labelled as the favourites at home, the Reds struggled massively to get past a resilient Forest side. The visitors sat deep and made life extremely difficult for the hosts, who had to dig deep to create chances in the game. It was in the second half the match came to life as the home side registered three crucial points. Liverpool might still be far away from the top four places, however, the last two results could give them an unlikely boost to secure Champions League football.
In the Premier League game on Saturday, one of the biggest challenges for Liverpool was to deal with the long throw-ins from Nottingham Forest. Asked about Forest making Liverpool work hard for the win, Jurgen Klopp, quoted by their club’s website, said, “Yes, especially when the ball was out, then the game really started – the throw-ins created a proper mess for us. You can prepare a lot in football – and this game was now the preparation for us for the future – but for this kind of thing, obviously we were not prepared well enough. We knew about the threat: when Niakhate has the ball and throws it into the box.”
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Klopp was not particularly happy in the manner at which Liverpool defended the long throw-ins into the penalty box. “The first ball we could have defended better, I think Ibou was a bit too much in a fight with whoever was around him, but how we deal with the second, third and fourth ball was not even close to being good enough because they won all of them and put it always back into the area and that, in the end, caused massive problems,” he said.
“I think especially the second goal they scored… as a player who is not directly involved, you need to read the situation better because everybody is there, there is one who fights for the ball and all the rest has to pick up where is the next potential threat. There, that was not good enough. We scored our goals as well from set-pieces, different set-pieces, so [it was a] strange game.”
Diogo Jota was one of the stars of the evening following his impressive performance in front of goal on Saturday. He scored the opener and the second of the evening for Liverpool. Speaking about Jota’s confidence, Klopp said, “Yeah, I think the second goal you really can see what goals do to offensive players. They give confidence. It was a super first touch, it didn’t look like a massive chance in the first moment when you see three in the box, bam, first touch great and then the second one is just exceptional. He could have scored a third one in the first half already – I’m not sure, did he have a chance in the second half for the third?”
“Again, that shows you can, as an offensive player, be involved in absolutely each defensive situation and be still a threat offensively. There’s no if [or] or – you can do both and Diogo is doing that. That makes him, for us, so valuable and that’s why he deserves that obviously. It’s wonderful after the long, long time that he was out and now having these positive things – was involved in the Arsenal equaliser in a very important manner and now scoring twice a brace – is top.”
