The Jurgen Klopp era at Liverpool has seen some matches where his side have scored in bunches, and with it gone for the opponent’s jugular. It’s made for some very exciting times for Liverpool supporters lately. Against Manchester City, in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals, the Reds scored three in just 19 minutes during the first half of the Anfield leg.
Those 19 minutes pretty much eliminated City from their European campaign. Ahead of the home leg of the semi-final tie with AS Roma, Klopp met the media (video at this link) to preview the match, and this topic came up.
Klopp compared his side’s ability to score with rapid succession, and with that, step on the opposition’s throat, to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famed swash-buckling Manchester United teams in the 1990s and 2000s.
“Is there something with Alex Ferguson, Man United. At a specific time, they scored always twice?,” said Klopp.
“Score, score? That is the opportunity. Score once, do it again. Use the momentum in the game. Of course we talk about it, of course we want to use that, but you still have to score. The team is a really enthusiastic team. In a good moment, they jump and that’s really good to see.”
“On the other hand, that’s why the two Man City games were really special. We dealt with the very difficult circumstances in the two halves here and there on a high level.”
“That brought us to the semis, not that we can score one, two, three in a row. In the moments when we are not in charge of the game, we are still in the game, that’s a very important thing and that helped us massively.”
Injury report, team news, match preview: go to this link
Liverpool starting XI Prediction: go to this link
Odds via Bet Fair: Liverpool to qualify: 2/5 Roma to qualify: 9/5
Prediction: Liverpool 3, AS Roma 2
As always, feel free to post to your own City and/or Liverpool starting XI predictions, as well as your score predictions, in the comments section below.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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