On whether he feels it is ‘fair for there to be discussion about his future’…
I don’t think it’s important if it is fair or not. But that it’s normal, that I understand. If any manager around the world loses football games, let alone as many as we have lost, it’s quite normal that people have an opinion about that and if that is fair or not fair, that’s for other people to judge. But that it’s normal, I think it is that if you lose so many times that people start talking about that.
On how ‘worried’ he is about his position…
I don’t agree with you that the quality [of Liverpool’s players] isn’t showing itself. I see enough moments that players show their quality but it doesn’t reflect in the score or in the results, that is clear. But no, I am not worried – what I mean with that is that my focus is on other things than worrying about my own position. I try to analyse [and] try to help the players as much as I can, and it is obvious that I don’t do it in the way that I did it last season because when you talk about individual errors, I think that is also something that comes from a team effort. So, again, I need to do better and that is what I am trying to do every single day, to improve the team, and that is where my main focus is, to be honest.
On whether he ‘is supported by and has had conversations with the people above him’ at the club…
Yeah, but not in the sense that they tell me every single minute, ‘We support you, we support you, we support you,’ but we talk a lot if we are winning, like last season, and if we are losing. Then they are helpful to me, to the team, so yes we do have those conversations but they don’t call me every single minute of the day to tell me that they still trust me. But we do have the normal conversations and in those conversations I feel the trust, but I haven’t spoken to them after this game yet, so let’s see.
On how long it takes him to get over defeats…
Long. Longer than after a win because after a win you’re straight away focused on the next one. Now you try to find answers as much as you can but that’s not as simple as people might think it is because if it would have been that simple I would have used those answers for us to start winning again. But the focus is, as always in football, mainly about trying to prepare them for the next game and preparing them is not only tactically, that could also mean that I need to have individual conversations tomorrow or team conversations with players.
I try to put as much effort in as I can to improve the situation – not only me, by the way, my staff does the same and the players are putting in a lot, a lot, a lot of effort as well. Although when you look at a 3-0 loss and a 4-1 loss you tend to feel as if we don’t do enough, but again today I saw a team that was trying after multiple setbacks but unfortunately not able to get a result.
