Klopp Talk: “I’m Happy with Where We Are”

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The Liverpool boss is happy with how his squad is shaping up ahead of the Premier League season opener against Fulham.

We’ve not yet started the 2022-23 season and the Reds have already won a trophy, so a 3-0 defeat for a very young group of players against Ligue 1 Strasbourg should really not matter at all, and even then, for manager Jurgen Klopp there are positives to take from Sunday’s pre-season finale.

“I said to the boys tonight after the game, I’m really proud of the second half, of the reaction,” he said after the match. “Because these boys, in their age groups, they are usually always the best and now we make the step to adult football and I loved the reaction.”

With the final pre-season game out of the way, it also means that Klopp and the coaching staff can turn their attention to the season that’s starting next week when Liverpool things off with a trip to London to face newly promoted Fulham in their Premier League opener.

“When you have a pre-season, I’m now long enough in the business that I think I can get a sense of where we are and how good we could be,” Klopp said. “But yesterday the game was a really good sign because we looked really ready, we looked really sharp and that’s important. Now we have a full week, and in the end I think we have two full weeks probably for the next two games to prepare.”

Liverpool’s 2022 pre-season has had some mixed results over the past few weeks—none of which actually matter except for beating Manchester City in a competition that’s definitely completely real, at least if you win it—but nobody remembers pre-season once the games that matter start, and Klopp is content that they’ve served their purpose.

“You have to use pre-season, that’s why we played today and now we have to see that we prepare well for Fulham because it’s a different game obviously,” he added. “But the boys look good so I’m happy with where we are.

“A little bit less injuries would be nice—we were a bit unlucky very early, before we really started training, to be honest, and that doesn’t help. But the boys will come back rather sooner than later and then we have a fuller squad. But in the moment, the boys who are available look really good and sharp.”