Football
Glenn Price, Liverpool correspondent 8y

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp remains cautious over title hopes

Jurgen Klopp says it is acceptable for Liverpool supporters to dream about Premier League glory but insists his side must not get carried away at this early stage of the season.

Liverpool have earned 10 points so far this campaign and have showed they can compete with the league's best by impressively beating Arsenal, Chelsea and champions Leicester City in their first five games of the 2016-17 season.

However, speaking ahead of Saturday's game against Hull City, Klopp said: "It is not important what I think. I am quite optimistic. Most of the time I only try to say things that help us because it is not important what I think or you think. You write what you want and I say what I want.

"The only thing I really can say is the biggest mistake you can make in life is to think about the finish before the next step. We have a lot of steps and a lot of things to do.

"Everyone can dream of something. That's nice but it is really about performing. I am not the person who celebrates before anything is decided.

"I'm not unhappy, I'm fine. It is OK what we did until now. It is not like I'm surprised and thinking: 'Oh my God, I thought it would be much worse' or 'I thought it would be much better.' It is what we have to do. We need to be competitive in each game, really competitive.

"We need to concentrate, use our skills, showing our quality and all of that stuff. Then we will see what we will get for doing that. We are completely fine with our quality but we have to show it all the time. That is what we really expect.

"We obviously know a few teams around know a little bit about playing football too. A lot of things can happen between now and the end of the season."

Klopp's Liverpool are looking to secure their fourth successive win in all competitions against Hull at Anfield after following up last Friday's 2-1 win at Chelsea with a comfortable victory at Derby County in the EFL Cup in midweek.

Inconsistency is the one blight on Klopp's reign of the Merseyside club and he feels there is work still to be done despite the recent good form.

"The question is 'what is consistency?' Is three games consistent?" Klopp added. "I'm pleased but until now we did what we think was the minimum that we should have done.

"Of course we had a little bit of luck in the first half against Arsenal. We know this but then we had those 30 minutes that decided the game.

"We could have won against Tottenham [a 1-1 draw] but we could have lost at the end too. The header of [Toby] Alderweireld brought a brilliant save from Simon [Mignolet]. Am I happy with the percentage of the good moments we've had in the games? Still we can do better.

"I said it after the Derby game in which we were really dominant, I thought afterwards: 'Was I ever in my whole life in a situation where I won against a second-division team in Germany or here and had so little problems?'

"But still I was not happy because we could have done much better. We have big expectations on ourselves. We really want to perform but we need all the help we can get."

^ Back to Top ^