Klopp Talk: Don’t Worry About the Goal Difference

Don’t worry, be happy.

Goal difference. It’s the thing you look at when two teams are on the same number of points. Man City are currently eight goals better than Liverpool on it.

A concern, no? Not if you ask Jürgen Klopp, who doesn’t seem to be thinking about it.

“I can’t tell the boys to go out there and score six goals because it’s disrespectful”, The Mirror report Klopp as saying.

“You score when you score. People may say when we play Huddersfield , for example, that we can improve our goal difference.

“But, as always, it can only be a case of score the first goal and then try to score the second.

“If the boys are doing it right then they don’t stop. You never stop.

“We cannot go for it any more than we are going for it now – and a game against Spurs is probably not the best time to think about this.

“We do know that it can be a decisive thing. But hopefully we will not have to change our plans.

“Maybe in the last game against Wolves , if we need to win by three or four goals, then we will try.

“But then changing the way we think might play into their hands.”

The thing is, it’s hard to deny that goal difference could be a factor in where the title ends up this season. Man City themselves won the league on goal difference back in the 2011-12 season. But one can’t really plan to win it on goal difference. The infamous 3-3 draw against Crystal Palace in the 2013-14 season was a game in which Brendan Rodgers admitted to trying to close the goal difference gap with City. Let’s not do that again.

It’s frustrating that one can’t have a definitive answer to this. But Klopp’s approach is probably correct: keeping up what we’re doing is the best we can ask for.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com