By Anton Brooks
The Premier League resumes this Saturday with a mouth-watering Merseyside derby kicking off at 12:30 at Goodison Park.
With Everton top of the league after a perfect start, and Liverpool coming off the back of a shock 7-2 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa, this has been touted to be a high scoring game of football.
It’s been 10 years since Everton last won the Merseyside Derby. When asked about the players’ mentality towards that record, Klopp said: “We never thought about it before we played them, not once. It’s hard work tomorrow for us and we’ll be ready for that.”
Mohamed Salah has statistically had his best start to a season, and after scoring Liverpool’s only two goals against Aston Villa, Klopp had this to say in the Egyptian’s improvement this campaign: “All these players out there are a mix.”
“There’s a lot of natural ability, but that alone doesn’t bring you to the Premier League and doesn’t let you win trophies in football. Without practicing you have no chance; you have to do things again and again and again.
But yes of course it’s all about practice, but it’s about the skill set of Mo, which is already outstanding. Without his attitude throughout his career, he would not be close to the player he is now.”
COVID-19 is still a massive problem in the UK today, and with players coming back from the international break from all over the world, Jurgen Klopp was asked about how this could impact his squad for tomorrow’s game.
He replied: “Both teams are in the same situation. Everton had players away and we had players away, so that’s kind of fair, if you want. The challenge at the moment is we make all the decisions with the knowledge we have.
Most of the FA’s (Footballing Associations) were very serious on their testing programs so we brought most of the players back, as much as we could, on private planes so they don’t get in contact with anybody else. We tried to do everything. When you come back from international teams, you don’t have to do a test before we play in the Premier League.”
Earlier this week, Naby Keita became the fourth Liverpool player to test positive for coronavirus after Xherdan Shaqiri, Sadio Mane and Thiago Alcantara. However, there is some good news for Liverpool fans as Thiago and Mane are back in full training and are available for selection.
On the team news, Alisson is still unavailable for selection as well as Naby Keita.
