Jurgen Klopp has challenged Liverpool to continue showing they have regained their identity after a dominant derby triumph - as he hailed an “insane” Anfield atmosphere.
Goals either side of half-time from Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo earned the Reds a 2-0 Premier League win over Everton on Monday night.
The victory was Liverpool’s first in the top flight since Boxing Day and moved them up to ninth place, still nine points adrift of the Champions League qualification places.
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But Klopp was delighted with the manner of the performance, and said: “Tonight was really important. It gave us all a sign that was us tonight, definitely. We have to make sure we are us from now on.
“I feel relieved. That’s it, that was the main feeling since the final whistle. Happy with the performance.
“In a meeting today I told the boys everybody thought the training week was really good but now we have to bring it on the pitch.
“We needed this game, we needed this performance, now we have it. Our people absolutely deserved it, I loved the atmosphere. Even before we scored, the people were there. It is insane what kind of atmosphere the people create here. Tonight we delivered and our people deserved it.”
Klopp added: “It was necessary that we played tonight the game we wanted to play and not the game Everton wanted to play. We can’t avoid that all the time. But they didn’t have an extremely high number of set-pieces.
“With all the aggressiveness you have to show, you have to make sure you don’t overdo it as each set-piece is a massive threat and something they want to have. I thought we did that really well. On top of that we were super dominant, switched the sides, played the ball, kept them running, and both goals came from counter-attacks, that’s allowed as well obviously.
“I loved both goals. I loved the involvement of everyone around, for both goals we had three options in the box when the pass came in. A lot of things were different tonight and it was our best game in a while. That’s why we won.”
Salah’s opener came from a counter-attack after Everton defender James Tarkowski had struck the post with a header from a corner.
And Klopp said: “Not conceding with their first chance they had, that was a very important moment as well. I’m not sure how much you can force luck but if you don’t have it, you are screwed.
"It’s not that we had too much, look at the first goal we conceded against Wolves (last week). We can talk about all the things we didn’t do well, but how that goal went in was slapstick.”
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