Jürgen Klopp Wants To Win, Not To Be Unbeaten

The Liverpool manager responds to questions about the in-season superlatives he cares nothing about.

It’s obvious to anyone who has paid attention to Jürgen Klopp’s press conferences that he is unimpressed with personal accolades or the various in-season superlatives that get handed out. But if you thought it would stop journalists from asking the manager how excited he his about his team’s league record at Anfield, you’d be wrong.

Liverpool are unbeaten in the Premier League while playing at Anfield this season and today Klopp was asking if it would mean anything special to him if his team could maintain that stat for the remainder of the season. His response was, “no.”

“Actually you want to be unbeaten the whole season,” Klopp clarified.

“If we draw from now on all the home games at Anfield then we are unbeaten at the end of the season. I don’t think that anybody would really be happy with this record.

“So, we should not be unbeaten, we should win football games. And we should not care too much where it is.”

The backdrop here is Rafa Benitez’s Newcastle visiting Anfield on Saturday and Klopp isn’t one to get bogged down in preserving some unbeaten-in stat. The match will be difficult, Rafa will have his team set up to frustrate Liverpool and the manager knows enough to not put pressure on the players or himself to maintain some arbitrary status, especially given that a January home loss to West Bromwich doesn’t count simply because it went down during an FA Cup match.

“If we win the game then we continue the record,” Klopp added before reluctantly conceding some joy in his team’s success. “Then I’m interested after the game. I think, ‘Okay, we extended it a little bit.’ That would be nice, but again, not too interested in records in general.”

The only two things that matter to Jürgen Klopp are winning and winning everywhere. But please ask him again if he’s absolutely overjoyed at being nominated for manager of the month.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com