Liverpool travel to Goodison Park to face Everton in the Merseyside derby on Wednesday night
Jurgen Klopp has admitted that he doesn’t like the intensity of the Merseyside derby, claiming that it is ‘too much’ for him.
Liverpool travel to Goodison Park to face their city rivals Everton on Wednesday night, in what will be the first time the two have met at the Toffees’ ground since Virgil van Dijk suffered a long-term injury.
Jurgen Klopp: Merseyside derby is too physical.
Richarlison was also sent off in the last meeting at Everton’s ground in what was a fiery 2-2 affair between the two and Klopp has said that he isn’t looking forward to facing Liverpool’s rivals in midweek.
“It’s always a completely different game, so I really very often don’t like the intensity of the game, it’s too much for me,” he said to Sky Sports.
“I like physical football, I have no problem with that, we play that, other teams play that, but in that game very often people put too much in. I can’t say it’s my favourite game of the year to be honest, because of that.
“But we have the chance to watch Everton tomorrow [Sunday], we will prepare for the game and will try to make a normal but good football game.”
The Reds are in excellent form this season – winning their game against Southampton on Saturday 4-0 after a brace from Diogo Jota, Thiago Alcantara and van Dijk secured a convincing victory at Anfield.
Klopp on Liverpool’s 4-0 win over Southampton.
Despite the three points though, Klopp still wasn’t happy with the number of chances missed by his side during the game.
Klopp said: “It’s not so easy to talk about football games when we lose them like we did last season so often in a specific period of the season, but I knew what we were lacking.
“We were lacking stability, we didn’t have stability. Not because we had no centre-backs for a while and had to find solutions for that, the problem was that we were shocked that we could not play the football we wanted to play.
“We didn’t have the stability which we have now, obviously, where everybody knows exactly what they have to do.
“When you put midfielders back in the last line, then you put midfielders in the line who usually don’t play there or are protected by either [Jordan] Henderson or Fabinho and now they play double six or these kind of things so that’s a problem and all of a sudden you lose your rhythm.
“We had to find solutions and thank god we found solutions early enough to qualify for the Champions League.
“This year we had a proper pre-season which was incredibly helpful, especially up front with Sadio [Mane] and Mo [Salah].
“They had the longest pre-season they’ve had for ages so we could really work on a lot of things and find the stability.”
