Jurgen Klopp was seen grinning after a long time as his Liverpool walked over Rangers in their Champions League outing in Scotland. Goals galore from Roberto Firmino, Darwin Nunez, Harvey Elliot and a the fastest hat trick in the history of the Champions League scored by Mohamed Salah steered the Reds to a thumping 7-1 win. The massive victory helped Liverpool recover from their defeat against Arsenal, and warm up fittingly for their weekend clash against reigning Premier League champions Manchester City.
The Reds’ boss however was relieved after his side finally dominated a game almost after ages to inject some confidence, which their center-back Virgil van Dijk had confessed was “creeping away”. Klopp further insisted that the win has set the tone perfectly for the City game, as they will now hope to contain the threat of Erling Haaland who has already smashed in 20 goals in just 12 games so far.
Jurgen Klopp elevated with Liverpool’s utter dominance ahead of hosting City
Jurgen Klopp was under immense firing as he was constantly failing to “reinvent” his Liverpool team after their Napoli drubbing on matchday 1 of the Champions League. The Merseyside club failed to win any of their Premier League games since then, and the Arsenal loss has them currently sitting 10th in the table. With City, who are ramming everyone and anyone coming into their path, Liverpool were looking more vulnerable to get another beating. However, the win has ‘changed the mood’ ahead of the City game as Klopp expressed:
“It’s completely different. We usually drink a beer after away games but it’s that long ago I drunk a beer I’ll probably be drunk after one. Yes it changed the mood completely but we all know who we are welcoming on Sunday and this will be a different game, but it’s better to go into it with this feeling we’ve got tonight than any other.
“A freak result, we all know that, and we don’t make more of it than we should, but obviously it’s the best we could have asked for and I’m pretty pleased. I’m always ready for a change in the right direction. We’ll see. We don’t have to make a big thing of it but the best football team in the world right now is waiting on Sunday and coming to Anfield. We’ll see what we can do. It was for us – for different reasons – incredibly important. Now we have to recover.”
While Jurgen Klopp certainly enjoyed the win, he was cautious as well while keeping City in mind. The champions are in scintillating form and are yet to face a defeat in all competitions. Liverpool cannot get carried away by their win over a low-key Rangers side to build on for locking horns with their fiercest rivals. Nonetheless, Klopp can still rejoice the Rangers thrashing as his talismanic forward Mo Salah regained his scoring touch and record signing Darwin Nunez too got on the scoresheet in back-to-back games.
Meanwhile, Manchester City endured a frustrating night in the Champions League as they were held to a 0-0 draw by minnows Copenhagen. Guardiola’s side was denied a goal after controversial VAR call, and Riyad Mahrez piled on the misery by missing a penalty. Haaland was rested by the Spaniard, as he will want his free-scoring forward fully fit and firing against the Reds at Anfield.