‘Besides’ - Jurgen Klopp names the one thing he didn’t like in Liverpool win vs Everton

Jurgen Klopp admitted that Liverpool should have been more ruthless on the counter-attack in their victory over Everton.

Klopp extended his fine Merseyside derby record with a 2-0 win against the Reds’ fierce rivals at Anfield on Saturday. Yet Liverpool were made to work for all three points. The home side were dominant in the opening 45 minutes and threatened on the breakaway on several occasions - although they couldn’t finish off the situations.

Ashley Young was sent off for Everton in the 37th minute but that didn’t make the Reds’ task of breaking the deadlock any easier. They had to wait until the 75th minute to finally go ahead when Mo Salah bagged from the penalty spot after Luis Diaz’s cross was handled by visiting defender Michael Keane. Salah then rounded off Liverpool’s triumph in the seventh minute of stoppage time.

The win ensured that the Reds bounced back to winning ways in the Premier League and are a point behind leaders Manchester City. On the victory, Liverpool boss Klopp said: “A difficult game. Even before the first whistle, I didn’t know 100 per cent how we would be ready for that. When we had the finishing in the warm-up Dom [Szoboszlai] told me, ‘I actually never played a derby before.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Salzburg don’t have a derby, Leipzig don’t have a derby, Hungary has maybe a derby but the countries who would be a derby, we never played since I played international football.’ ‘OK, good, no problem, you give always 100 per cent so you are ready for the game.’

“So you don’t know exactly how it is, and I liked what I saw, besides that we should have finished situations off better. They didn’t even become chances but there were super situations where we had four-v-one, four-v-two counter-attacks and with the quality we have, we have to play a better last pass. That didn’t happen so 0-0, red card, changed the game again. Everton were not [in] that deep a block before that but after that they were obviously [in] 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 [was] 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 just to play to the final whistle, try it, and then we scored the first goal. The penalty, really well done by Lucho crossing the ball in that moment; a one-v-two situation I think and then still can cross the ball. And then late, 2-0, game finished.”