Jurgen Klopp thinks his comments about Liverpool being able to play “free football” following their defeat to Watford could have been better considered.
Liverpool threw away the chance of an unbeaten Premier League season at Vicarage Road, while also missing out on what could have been a record-breaking 19-game winning run in the competition.
"Now we can play free football again and don't have to try to get a record,” Klopp said immediately after the game.
“We just have to try to win football games again, and that's what we will do.”
However, having gathered his thoughts for his pre-match press conference ahead of Tuesday’s FA Cup clash with Chelsea, Klopp was more reflective.
“It is a bit difficult. I don’t know what I said 100 per cent after the game,” he admitted.
“I go in the dressing room then I go out and people confront me, like always, with questions which I didn’t think about until a second before.
“I say the things I say. If I say from now that we can play free football again, that would mean I felt we couldn’t do that before. I didn’t feel that, to be honest.
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“Would we have loved to have won game number 19? Yes. Absolutely. But then you don’t win it and we know how difficult it is.
“We don’t have to make it bigger. We lost a football game.
“Whenever it happens, it feels really average. Really, really bad. That’s how we felt.
“But it is not like we are now relieved of all the pressure and we can focus on football again. It was just an answer, to be honest, without long thinking!”
Klopp also confirmed that midfielder Naby Keita would miss the Chelsea match due to a slight hip problem, but the Guinean could return for Saturday’s Premier League game with Bournemouth.
“A little, little, little bit with his hip,” he said.
“I can’t really say more, that’s the only information I got from the medical department.
“He is not ready. He could be ready for after that game but not this one. It is not serious, but serious enough.”
