Jurgen Klopp is not the most conventional of football managers.
And perhaps there is still a tiny issue with things being lost in translation when he speaks to the media.
Or maybe he is just bonkers and he really has just encouraged his defenders to carry out violence on him rather than concede any more stupid goals.
The club will be depending on Dejan Lovren and Mamadou Sakho over the next few weeks to hold the defence together, and today he told reporters his very clear and simple message for both men in the coming weeks.
Sakho, who looks very awkward at the best of times, endured a horrid time against Watford, while Lovren is known to suffer from the odd brain-fart moment and can give the ball away under no major pressure.
So Klopp feels that if coaching won’t work, he jokingly admitted that maybe a threat of violence against him will get the message across not to play stupid bloody passes to put his team in peril as they get ready to play Sunderland on Wednesday.
“Dejan trained this week with the team for the first time, it was not that long an injury but he was out two weeks.”
“And yeah, you saw Mama (Sakho) before the injury, then last week and today, it’s difficult to come in. Nobody’s waiting for you, you have to be prepared from the first second, there’s no time to come in easy, but they did really good.”
“I said both played one of these passes – I said ‘If you want to kill me, take a knife, don’t play these passes, you don’t have to.”
“Everybody is running, everybody’s won the ball and then they play these. It’s an invitation to counter-attack.”
“But the rest was really good, the clean sheet was very good for us.”
We know Klopp was joking, but the man is a bit mental. So we’d not be a bit surprised if Klopp threatened some violence on players who don’t listen to him.
