The Reds’ manager was delighted with the fire and passion his players showed to overturn both deficits
As we indicated in the player ratings last night, it’s not every week you see a side showing such fight and fire in their bellies that they overturn a deficit when down to ten men. And it’s something that we’ve seen even more rarely from Liverpool in recent seasons.
But on Sunday afternoon, Jurgen Klopp saw a small part of his grand plan come to fruition as the Reds worked themselves back from a goal – and man – down to beat Crystal Palace 2-1.
Many will attempt to detract from the win, as you may have seen former Liverpool player Mark Lawrenson do last night, by claiming the team was very fortunate. But to win a game, you have to give yourself the best possible chance and, as those involved in football love to say: you make your own luck. If Liverpool were lucky, they certainly made that luck themselves.
And Jurgen Klopp has given full credit for the comeback to his players, who rallied after the reshuffle that resulted from James Milner’s sending off.
Speaking after the match at his press conference, Klopp said (via Liverpoolfc.com): “We wanted to bring Phil Coutinho onto the pitch [and thought about] how we could do this. On the right wing we thought we could be a little bit more offensive with Milner instead of Flanno.
“I think it was the first moment after they had a short corner, lost the ball, bam, second yellow. Things like this happen. It’s not the first time in my life, maybe it’s the first time in Milly’s life, I’m not sure.
“It’s not the biggest problem, we were one man down and 1-0 behind but it’s not a problem for the offensive things because you don’t need 11 players for offensive play.
“But it makes sense to have 11 for defending, so we had to find a solution for this and we tried to do it with 3-4-2. It’s more about passion than about formation in this moment. We did well, we needed a little bit of luck of course.
“I think [across] the whole 90 minutes we deserved the luck but in the situation around [the equaliser], we needed a bit of luck to force this mistake and could use it to score a goal.
“To be honest, I think nobody really thought that we would try to make another goal, but Christian had another idea. He took the ball, went into the box, and it was a challenge, it was a foul, it was a penalty and he took the chance for us. It was really good.”
Seeing the Liverpool players show almost as much passion as their manager usually does on the touchline may have come at just the right time to face Manchester United again, and the rest that the likes of Philippe Coutinho (for most of the game) and Daniel Sturridge got was also encouraging.
With United suffering a similar fate, in have a key player sent off, yes conspiring to lose, both sides should enter into the game in very different moods and frames of mind and that’s no doubt exactly how Klopp will have wanted it to go.
