Jürgen Klopp had a lengthy meeting with the media ahead of the Reds' match with Nottingham Forest at Anfield. The boss discussed what he expects from the club after a 6-1 win at Leeds, the role and future of Darwin Núñez and addressed why Harvey Elliott and a few other players have not seen the pitch in recent days.
I don't think anyone expects Liverpool to score 6 goals in every fixture, but Jürgen Klopp does think the Reds can play at a high level for the rest of the year.
“It's strange that with the very average season we played so far in general and having a couple of the highest results in this club's history, which is absolutely strange,” Klopp said. “It was a very stable performance, which is very important and that's what we have to build on. I cannot sit here now and guarantee any kind of results or whatever; I said it before, weeks or months ago, we have to guarantee performance levels and that's definitely what we have to do now.”
Like the rest of the team, Darwin Núñez has had an up-and-down year. Sometimes he looks like one of the top players in world football, others he barely makes an impact on the match. With Liverpool getting healthy and having more players available, Klopp discussed his role for the rest of this season and future seasons with the Reds.
“Darwin is a player with a different skill set to all our other players,” Klopp said. “That's good. He's a real handful, he's a machine and he's scored already a decent number of goals, so that's all fine. But yes, of course, he's still adapting. This is a long-term project. I understand the team wants to play desperately from the beginning and stuff like this. That's all fine but we have to find a way that works really for us again. Then we have to fit in the players we really can use the specific strengths as well. I'm completely fine with the situation.”
With all those players returning from injury, the unfortunate side effect is that some talented players will have to be left off of the team sheet. Such is the case for Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho among others.
“He's (Elliott) training exceptionally,” Klopp said. “Fabio Carvalho is training exceptionally, to be honest. All the boys [are]. That's the hardest part, [we] never had it the whole season and now we have it and all of a sudden I leave five players at home and they are all of a sudden not even in your squad. Crazy!”
I think the boss is right on point with his message to the media this week. He has been preaching consistency all season and the Reds have finally started to find it in the last few games, It comes as no surprise that the strongest play of the year comes after everyone is healthy for the first time. Unfortunately, that means Klopp has to make tough decisions about who to leave off of the squad each week. I bet other clubs wish they had that problem.