On the rivalry with Everton and how he compares David Moyes’ team this season to last season…
When we faced them last season they had a very good spell as well – and it wasn’t a spell because they just kept on going with that and into this season again also. I think they’ve made some good signings and one of them is of course a player on loan who was worth £100m in the past, someone paid £100m for him and he is doing so well for them, Jack Grealish. So, a good team.
Indeed, there is rivalry but what I also liked and I want to emphasise in this moment as well is what they did when Diogo [Jota] passed away, coming to Anfield, being there, and of course they showed their respect from sporting director to sporting director and all these kind of things. So, in these moments of time it’s so nice to see that in those tragedies the rivalry is still there but the respect towards both is also there. So yeah, looking forward to the game tomorrow because every Anfield game is special but this derby is even more special.
On how he prepares the new signings who have not played in the derby before…
I have experienced the away game as something different than something I’ve experienced before than all the other away games we’ve played, but Newcastle away felt similar for me as Everton away last season. It is not for the first time we play this [type of] game and for the new ones it’s not the first time they play in circumstances where there is a lot of rivalry, a lot of intensity in the game, a lot of tackles being made.
But I think yes, the focus should be on the rivalry but should also be on what we need to do to win that game and that is being intense, that is winning the duels but that is definitely also going to be playing good on the ball and playing good when we don’t have the ball, be intense. It’s again going to be a difficult game because they have many good players.
I don’t know exactly what they are going to do – is it going to be like last season when we faced a lot of long balls, while this season I have seen them playing out from the back many times very well. Maybe also because they have brought in some very talented players that can play both styles. So we have to prepare them for that and of course maybe Virgil [van Dijk], Mo [Salah] and these kind of players will tell the new ones what they can expect.
But we are not talking about rookies, it’s not like these players play for the first time in a full stadium or for a first time in these kind of games. If you talk about Florian [Wirtz], he has played so many special games in his career already and I can come up with all the others as well. Yes, it’s special but it is not miles off other special games they have played.
