On it ‘not getting much better’ than winning a game and going five points clear at the top of the table…
Because of the first reason – if you win it mostly doesn’t get better than that and yeah, you know if you win the amount of games we do, you can be ahead. It’s not sure yet in this league because Arsenal, City, Chelsea, all these clubs that are playing in this league, they are able to win so many games as well and that’s what they have shown in the last few seasons. So, we are only focused on ourselves and then a win against a very good team like Villa, who have done so well in the last few years, is always important.
On the Anfield atmosphere and whether City’s defeat provided the supporters with ‘extra motivation’…
I cannot tell what the fans felt about that. I can only tell that if my players need extra motivation for a result on the pitch, that would not be a good idea. I think if you play at Anfield in front of your own fans you should always be motivated and that’s what they’ve been for the time I have been here now and probably the years before as well. So, you should not need motivation from a result on another pitch and that’s also not what I felt today with the players. Maybe the fans feel different, I don’t know, you’d have to ask them.
On the fact both goals came from Villa corners and whether Liverpool had paid attention to their opponents’ set-pieces beforehand…
We did put effort in defending them from scoring because that was also today – not in general, but today – that was their main threat in my opinion, their set-pieces, so we had to do a lot to prevent them from scoring and one or two times we needed our goalkeeper for that. And then these counter-breaks had nothing to do with what we do on the training ground or what we tell them before: that is pure quality and purely what the players come up with in these transition moments. For us, it’s about preventing the other team from scoring but for the ones that have been here for so many years it’s not going to be a complete surprise because it happened before I think.
