On his expectations for the season…
The reason why that is so difficult [to retain the title] lies mainly in the fact that there’s so many competitors that can also win the league over here. To win it once is already very special, let alone if you can win it twice in three, four or five years, or as we did, twice in five years and [Manchester] City did even better than us in the last few years. So that’s unbelievable if you’re able to do this in this league. And probably this year is going to be harder than every year before, because every team brings in new players but our main competitors definitely did as well.
On what he expects from Bournemouth on Friday…
[They are] intense. They made it really difficult for us last season. We beat them 3-0, where you feel like ‘What is he talking about, difficult?’ But if you look at the game, they had the first big chance of the game, they scored a goal which was fractionally offside. Then we three times, I wouldn’t say counter-attacked them but we were very fast in moving the ball from back to forward. And all of sudden at half-time we were 3-0 up, and then I thought – which I always thought when I was a manager in Holland – ‘This is going to be four, five or six-nil’.
But the mentality Bournemouth showed in the second half, they just kept on going. That’s the mentality they had throughout the whole season afterwards as well. They also lost some players, they also brought in good new ones – as they’ve shown in the last few years, that they can always bring in good new players. And away, it was even more difficult for us. So, very good team, good manager and a challenge for us on Friday. But looking forward to it because an evening game at Anfield is something that everyone is looking forward to it.
On improving Liverpool’s defensive solidity after pre-season…
Don’t forget we missed [Alexis] Mac Allister as well in the last part of last season and he hardly was able to play in our pre-season, only now recently he has played a few games, played a few minutes. But it’s not that I’m not happy about certain parts, I was [saying] just a second ago that the standard here is 10 out of 10. So, it’s not one or two things we don’t do well, no. In general we do all well but well is not good enough and there we have to go one step up in certain aspects. Not in all aspects, in certain aspects.
And then there’s something like against Bilbao, we were really good defensively but conceded two set-pieces. And the games before, we also had mixed teams so then you can also accept a little bit better that maybe timings between players were not as good as when you play the starters that have played so many times together. So, there are reasons for it. Like I just said, mixed teams; new players coming in, Virgil [van Dijk] being sick against Bilbao, Alisson [Becker] not being there, Macca being injured, Ryan not able to play and new players brought in. But all of this is definitely not an excuse when we start the league on Friday because we will 100 per cent be ready on Friday.
