Jurgen Klopp says a team needs to have a “nearly perfect season” to win the Premier League as the Liverpool boss dissects what’s gone wrong for the Reds this season.
“Before the season, yes, we knew we were good,” Klopp told Sky Sports. “That did not mean we were going to win it, but it just increases your responsibility to achieve something.
“We are still a good team but a lot of things have happened this season and if you want to win the league in England you have to play a nearly perfect season.
“You can see that now with City. They did not start perfectly but they obviously now are in a mood where it looks like perfection. Results wise, one hundred per cent. Performance wise, not far away. That is the season you have to play to become champions in England.”
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It’s been far from perfect for Liverpool.
“We started the season pretty well,” Klopp points out. He is right. Three wins out of three before the 7-2 defeat to Aston Villa that looked like an outlier but will now be seen as foreshadowing the troubles to come. At the turn of the year, it was their only defeat.
“We were, for a long time, on top or around the top of the table, scoring goals.”
From that point Liverpool have dropped like stone, losing more games in two months of 2021 than in the previous two years combined.
“The problems that we had, it was always clear that they would become influential if we could not sort it by the players coming back. That is what happened.”
“Most of the problems are as a result of the injury situation,” says Klopp. “This year we have faced completely new problems. I have never in my life – and I have been doing the job for 20 years – had to change the last line every week.
“I am a much better manager this season than I was before because usually you are not having to think about these things but now I am having to think about them constantly.
“We had a situation on Friday night. We trained all week, or the few days that we had to train, with one specific line-up and then overnight we had to change it completely. That is another big thing to do that is common in football but we have had it plenty of times.
“People might say that is an excuse. I could not care less, to be honest. We do not use it as an excuse but if you ask me the question then it is the explanation for why things changed.
“We are all detail fanatics and it is very important that the little things work really well because then they become really influential on the bigger picture.
“Very often, that means the way you defend. You work on it but you do not change it too much because defending is something where stability is really important. And we have had to change our defence way too often to have any kind of stability, that is the truth.
“Still, for a while, we got the results we wanted. But then we started playing not that well any more because now we had to put more focus on protecting our offensive situations.
“That cost us fluency and fluidity offensively. At that point, we realised that we were not creating as much any more, but we were still scoring goals. Then, we were not creating enough, only a few chances, and we were not scoring goals either.
“That is when the results go and you find that the train you want to be on is – if not gone – already far away.
“Now, we are playing good football again. We create chances but we don’t score. So we have had pretty much all of the problems that you can have in football in one season.”
Klopp laughs at the thought of it.
“I am not angry about it or whatever, I am 53 years old. I have had different moments in my life. Wonderful moments, lesser moments. It is just a football problem.
“Dealing with frustration, dealing with failures, you can learn so much in these moments, it is unbelievable. That is what we will do.
“It helps you in life.”
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