Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp wants to see more of the attitude shown by his players during the past two games. The Reds’ 1-0 victories over Leicester and Sunderland were not pretty but stopped the rot after three Premier League games without a win.
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Klopp has had standout results in his short tenure in charge such as the 4-1 victory at Manchester City and 3-1 success against Chelsea, but there have also been losses to Crystal Palace, Newcastle and Watford. The goals against Leicester and Sunderland were scored by Christian Benteke – a feat Klopp welcomed by challenging the striker to play better.
The German said: “He made again the decisive goal in the game, and that’s the best thing a striker can do. When I said he can play better, that’s for everybody, they all can play better.
“First of all you have to fight for the result and that’s the biggest change in the last two games from the other games. Until then, we won our really good games, but when we were average then we lost.
“That’s not how it should be if you want consistently to get results. We took these very important points in a difficult game (against Sunderland). That’s very important. We defended well, we had our opportunities and Christian was there again.”
Liverpool travel to West Ham today and boss Slaven Bilic is weighing up whether to throw Dimitri Payet straight in against the Reds despite the midfielder being a month ahead of schedule in his fitness battle.
Bilic said: “Is he in contention to start? Yes. He is back, he’s been training with us for a couple of days and depending on how he does today I’m expecting him to be in the squad and available for the game. We will see how much he is going to participate in the game.”
