Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp is extremely unhappy with how his team is being talked about these days. He believes that the Reds are being portrayed unfairly, and currently get an undeserved bad rap. The German even said that the current feeling makes it sound like “we have nil points and we are the worst team in the league.”
Liverpool have suffered some notable setbacks in three different competitions lately. They were ousted from the League Cup round of 32 by Leicester City Tuesday night in a 2-0 decision that saw Klopp himself vent his frustrations about his team’s horrible defensive lapses this season.
Their last two Premier League games were disastrous too, as they dropped points in a 1-1 draw to Burnley, a side from which almost everyone expected the Reds to take all three points. That followed an extremely unsightly result, a 5-0 loss to Manchester City.
In UEFA Champions League group play, Liverpool dominated Sevilla eight days ago, but still only managed a draw. It was another opportunity missed as Jurgen Klopp and company prepare to take on Leicester again on Saturday, this time in league play. Despite all the bad times, Klopp maintains that all the negativity surrounding his club is overblown and unfair.
“We’ve proved it already 100 times. It sounds like we have nil points and we are the worst team in the league,” he said at a news conference.
“Yes, we have problems — that’s why we only have eight points and not 15. That’s the situation. We can make it more serious than it is, or take it like it is. Yes, we still have work to do and it would be the same if we had 15 points — it would only feel different.”
“Yes, we have the right characters. Yes, sometimes we react really well, sometimes we don’t react perfectly and we can improve in each part of our game.
“Character is nothing fixed, it’s not to say: ‘You cannot improve in this,’ ‘You cannot change your mentality’ — of course you can.
“You only have to get used to it and if we take the right information of the things we’ve done so far, it always helps.”
Kudos to Jurgen Klopp for not doing the fallacious sports press conference cliche- “we don’t listen to what’s being said about us/what’s written about us.” In fact, he did the total opposite, which is refreshingly honest and genuine.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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