Jurgen Klopp has admitted he wasn’t sure what to expect from Liverpool against Everton before they proved their worth with a 2-0 win.
Kostas Tsimikas started at left-back in the absence of the injured Andy Robertson while Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch were all handed Merseyside derby debuts
Again handed a 12.30pm post-international break kick-off, Liverpool were made to work for all three points
Klopp was pleased to see them come through the first Merseyside derby of the season unscathed with all three points.
Klopp
“A good afternoon, a difficult game. Even before the first whistle, it always is,”
"I didn’t know 100 percent how we would be ready for that.
“When we had the finishing before and the warming up, Dom (Szoboszlai) told me he had actually never played a derby before. 'What do you mean?'
‘Well, Salzburg doesn’t have a derby. Leipzig doesn’t have a derby. Hungary maybe has a derby but the countries who would be a derby, we haven’t played since I played international football'. 'Okay, good. No problem, you always give 100 percent so you are ready for the game'.
“So you don’t know exactly how it will look but I liked what I saw, besides that we should have finished situations off better.
"I think they didn’t even become chances but were super situations where we had four vs one, four vs two counter attacks and with the quality we have, we have to play better with the last pass.
“That didn’t happen so 0-0. Red card. Changed the game again. Everton was not that deep a block before that but after after that they were obviously a really deep block.
“We had to get used to that. That took a little bit too long for my taste. But what was really important today that we didn’t get frustrated in the second half with the fact that we didn’t score already. And I thought we did that really well.
“I saw that we were ready to play to the final whistle. Try it and then we scored. We got the first goal with the penalty.
"Really well done by Lucho, crossing the ball in a moment one vs two situation and still can cross the ball. And then late, 2-0. Game finished.”
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