Jurgen Klopp has explained that he wants to see his Liverpool team ‘fight’ tomorrow against Napoli in their final Champions League group stage game.
The Reds secured their place in the round of 16 of the competition after their 3-0 loss to Ajax last week.
After back-to-back Premier League defeats against Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, the German explained what kind of performance he expects from his side against the Italian side.
“Fight,” the 55-year-old replied when asked what he wanted to see from the FA Cup winners at Anfield tomorrow night (via Liverpoolfc.com). “Do you think I want to see now that we start going around them, heels and bike kicks and this kind of thing? Of course not.
“We have to work and we will. For that, we have to make sure the guys we line up are ready to do that and then we’ll do that and then we’ll see what we get.
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“The problem is that Napoli will also fight, but that’s fine, that’s the Champions League, competition at the highest level. As I said, really a team in top form at the moment. They line up who they line up, they can make changes, every striker scores and all that kind of stuff, that’s their situation.
“We also had that situation from time to time, so I’m not jealous or whatever. It’s fine, well deserved. But we have to be the opponent they don’t want to face. But at the moment, I think the mood in the Napoli camp is quite good, rightly so, that they think: ‘Let’s give them the next hit.’ And we have to fight against that.”
Napoli are in sensational form this season and are five points clear at the top of Serie A.
They beat us 4-1 in Napoli in the opening game of the group stage of Europe’s biggest competition last month and they haven’t dropped a single point in the competition yet.
Top spot is still up for grabs for Liverpool tomorrow, but only if we beat Luciano Spalletti’s side by a four-goal margin.
The Italians are on a 13-match winning streak and haven’t lost a game since April, so we’re certainly going to have to show some ‘fight’ to avoid losing successive games at Anfield.
We may already be in the round of 16 of the competition, but let’s hope for a strong performance to lift the spirits in camp.
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