Jurgen Klopp was in particularly combative move when facing the media ahead of Liverpool’s Champions League clash against Napoli on Tuesday.
While the Reds still have an outside chance of topping Group A – they need to beat the Serie A leaders by four goals – much of the discussion centred around their worrying start to the Premier League campaign.
And the Liverpool boss met head-on the questions concerning his team's indifferent form and the reasons behind it.
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Beware the smell
Defeat to Leeds United on Saturday evening was the first Premier League game Liverpool had lost at Anfield since March 2021 and their first such reverse in front of paying supporters since April 2017.
A fifth defeat in 18 games this season means not since the 2014/15 campaign have the Reds lost so many times before Christmas.
And Klopp said: “There is the next game coming up and that is our life and then the next game against Tottenham and then Derby and then Southampton. None of them will come here and just say 'Liverpool are in a difficult moment, let’s give them an easy run'.
“It's actually the opposite, they all smell the chance and that is what they want to use. That is our situation.”
Fighting talk
While accepting many of Liverpool’s faults this season, Klopp took umbrage at the suggestion his players are lacking fight. And when it was suggested the recent defeat at Nottingham Forest was a game in which his players demonstrated a lack of appetite for a scrap, the Reds boss was having none of it.
“To say we didn’t fight against Forest is not right,” said Klopp. “You lose a game and people tell you you didn’t try hard enough. You can fight in different ways.
“Yes, we could have played better and done a lot of things better but the boys fight. The fight is there. Do we do it always with 100%? You need the full conviction about what you are doing as well and the full physicality ability. The fighting spirit is not our problem at this moment. This group in that aspect did not change and will not change. But all of a sudden everybody thinks you are not trying hard enough.
"I used to say press conferences are like a holiday but I cannot say that any more because facing your questions when you lose is really tough. After a game when you lose and you still haven't sorted everything you think about, it is real torture. Again, that is part of the job. I had another a look at my payslip and that is what I am paid for, and it is pretty good as well. It's okay. You can criticise, absolutely right. We have to work.”
Klopp’s toilet truth
After the Leeds game, Klopp made little effort to hide his displeasure at the manner of the visitors’ winning goal when Liverpool missed a number of chances to close down their opponent before the chance was created.
And having admitted he was still being kept awake at night by the strike, the Reds boss was later pressed on whether having his sleep interrupted by on-field issues was a regular concern.
“I am 55, I go a couple of times per night on the toilet!” joked Klopp. “That is why I wake up usually. But this time the goal was in my mind.”
Milner stays quiet
After Klopp left the stage, it was the turn of vice-captain James Milner to field questions.
The 36-year-old continues to prove an important option for Liverpool having featured in all bar one game this season. But Milner, who is out of contract at the end of the campaign, neatly sidestepped questions over his future.
“Have there been any talks? No,” he said. “The most important thing at the moment is we’re trying to get to a level we want to be at consistently. I’m trying as best I can to influence that and whatever the manager asks me to do I am ready to do that. Touch wood, hopefully I can stay fit.”
New disappointment for youngsters
Milner’s vast experience – he has accrued more than 600 appearances in the Premier League alone – has allowed him to view Liverpool’s present troubles in perspective. However, he admits such struggles could be new to a number of younger players in the squad given they have grown accustomed to success at Anfield.
“I have seen and experienced pretty much most things in the game,” he said. “Some of the younger guys have been fortunate enough to be involved in a very successful time. We have had disappointments in the group by missing out on league titles by a point and losing finals.
"But this (now) is a different disappointment and something we haven’t been through as team too much, which is a positive. We have to keep working hard and stick together."
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