By Thys Khiba – Liverpool football manager Jurgen Klopp suggested that having five senior midfielders influenced his decision to bench Fabinhoand start the match against Manchester United with other three senior midfielders.
“No, we have in the moment five senior midfielders and we have to start with three,” said Klopp.
This is after Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat by Manchester United at Old Trafford on Monday night.
Responding to a question about why he decided to start with Fabinho on the bench, Klopp indicated that they could have started with two if they had more attackers.
“We could start with two if we would have more attackers but we have only three attackers, so it means we start with three and the change during the game and it’s like how we want to start.”
Liverpool suffered their first Premier League loss since December as United managed to score two goals against one goal of Mohamed Salah.
Klopp confirmed that Naby Keita won’t be training anytime soon due to his injury. Keita wasn’t featured on the starting, benched line up and missed the trip to Fulham due to his injury.
“We need further assessment, buy it doesn’t look like that tomorrow he is in training. But we need further assessment.”
On his own assessment and view about Liverpool and Manchester United game, Klopp said it wasn’t clear what United would play.
“Were they more aggressive than us in the beginning? Probably, yes. It was exactly the game United wanted to play and you can say that is our fault if you want.”
Klopp indicated that it wasn’t easy to create new chances in every 20 seconds against many legs in the defence of United.
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