On the collective performance of Liverpool’s defence in keeping a clean sheet…
If you play in a Liverpool shirt you get a lot of credit, mainly, and sometimes you maybe get a little bit of criticism, which is not a problem at all. Today they were outstanding. You have to be outstanding if you play Arsenal because of all the attacking threat that they have. I think they thought, ‘Wow, we did a great job,’ and then they look at the line and see [Eberechi] Eze and [Martin] Odegaard coming in! But again they did well also against them. So, a very good game. I think Virgil [van Dijk] was already unbelievable against Newcastle and he and the others were very good again today as well.
On what he is happy about from his team in the early weeks of the season and what still needs to improve…
Mentality. Having to bring quite a lot of new players in because quite a few left and then if you have to start the season against Bournemouth – who were last season already really good and this season again are already on six points – playing Newcastle away, which is for every single team in the league one of the most difficult away games, and then playing Arsenal at home, which is definitely one of the three or four most difficult games of the season. Then already doing what we are doing – we are not perfect and we were not perfect last season, by the way, as well.
But still what you can see is a great mentality and everybody wants to work so hard to get a result over the line and then you need a little bit of luck, which we had at Newcastle [and] today. But, I’ve said this so many times, I think it was Michael Jordan [who said], ‘The harder we work, the more luck we get,’ and that is something I think you can say about this team. They work incredibly hard and there will be moments in the season where we work just as hard and we don’t find the luck of scoring a goal, but we always give ourselves a chance because we work so hard.
