Jürgen Klopp has said Liverpool’s players would question his sanity if he criticised them after two consecutive defeats and they can demonstrate at Brighton on Saturday there is no insecurity in the Anfield ranks.
The Premier League leaders have suffered back-to-back defeats for the first time this season. Manchester City ended Liverpool’s unbeaten league campaign before Wolves knocked them out of the FA Cup, although the manager insists there is no cause for alarm or inquests into the difficult start to 2019.
Klopp said: “You don’t lose a game in the first part of the season and then lose your head. That would be strange. That would be bad and in general not the right thing to do. This is a moment where your team could sit in the dressing room and really think: ‘Is he mad?’ because it was not that bad. We talk about Man City and it was what, 11mm? Not a lot from getting a point and a brilliant result. Then we go to Wolves and I make the changes. That says more about me than the team, so let’s carry on. It’s a normal situation, it’s still very positive.
“If you point the finger then it becomes even bigger. There’s no reason for doing it. Nothing happened, each team in the world can lose at Man City. We spoke about why, what we did, what happened and what we could have done better of course, but that’s how we do it always.
“It’s only people who are insecure who would say we are going in completely the other direction and have lost belief. We have to prove it [that is not the case] on the pitch again.”
Klopp has won only eight of his 26 matches in January as the Liverpool manager but insists there is no recurring problem. “I don’t see a specific reason for that,” he said. “So far we’ve lost one Premier League game in January and that was Manchester City away. That’s not a sign of a bad record in January. It’s just a sign of a really difficult game. I’ve never felt bad in January. It’s just that December is a tough month to go through for all of us.”