The Champions League clash against Maribor will be another chance for us to continue our solid home form as we have not lost a game at Anfield this season. We face the side that we demolished in our last European game 7-0, and a repeat performance could give us a lead in the group before a couple of tough matches.
Sevilla and Spartak Moscow face each other and with us on 5 points at the moment, another 3 could make our passage into the next round easier.
Jurgen Klopp was sharing his thoughts before the game and the Mirror carried quotes from the German where he spoke about Loris Karius starting against the Slovenian side.
He also added that he would not be taking Maribor lightly and that he does not expect another 7-0 win.
“After 7-0 many may not respect Maribor, but we do.
“Maybe it’s a challenge for people to be 100% spot on, but my job is to make sure we are.
“Don’t think about the result, you should never think about the result before the game. If we win 1-0, that’s fine.”
Klopp also spoke about the improvement in performances from our side but he did not say that we could win the Champions League, thanks to a number of quality sides in the tournament.
“I never ignore performances, the good or the bad ones. We have to prove ourselves on the pitch all the time.
“One and a half weeks after a bad game I cannot say ‘yes, we learned from it’.
“Live is a process. We learn, we have to improve. But I don’t think many people reach a final point where it all just works.
“In the Champions League, results side OK, performance side, very good.
“You want to win it, is it possible? There are a number of good teams out there.”
Updates on Mane and Lallana
The German has missed Sadio Mane and Adam Lallana in the past weeks due to injury but he did suggest that the attacking pair will be returning to training during the international break and that is possibly when we might see them in action.
“Sadio had this morning a clearing session before he returns to training. Now he’s not in the squad so tomorrow is a down day, then on Thursday he should be in training.
“Adam will be part of team training in the international break. Both of them are in a good way, but not good enough to involve them tomorrow or at West Ham.”
There were some who were wanting to ask Klopp about the abuse that Dejan Lovren suffered after the Tottenham showing and recently the Croatian defender even shared a screenshot of a social media site where someone threatened his family. But our manager did not want to speak about it.
A win against Maribor is the least we should expect from the game and anything less than three points would make our chances of making it out of the Champions League group very slim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnVhSF3EqU4
