Klopp slams questions over tactics

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp slammed suggestions his team were inflexible and lack a plan B.

The German has been questioned over his tactics during the season, with his side having fallen out of Premier League title contention after a poor start to 2017.

Klopp, whose team are on a six-match unbeaten run and sit third ahead of a trip to West Brom on Sunday, said he was tired of those querying whether he had alternative plans for his side.

“If somebody speaks to me about plan A or plan B, I don’t really understand this. It was never the case – actually I lose a bit of respect if people say things like this,” he told UK newspapers.

“In this season we had a lot of possession and won games against teams like Hull and Leicester. Brilliant football, was not the highest intensity, pressing or whatever. It was football at its best or whatever.

“When you go back and look at my teams with [Borussia] Dortmund in 2012 or 2013 it was not all pressing and counter-pressing, we played football and won games and all that stuff. This season [we lost] not because we didn’t have a plan B but it was about having difficulties in different games.”

Meanwhile, Liverpool will pay their tributes to the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough tragedy on Saturday, on what is the 28th anniversary of the disaster.

“We will mark the occasion as a team,” Klopp said. “I know, at the wish of the families, this is the first year where the service doesn’t take place at Anfield.

“There is a memorial at Melwood with the names of the 96 people who lost their lives. We, as a team, will pause, show our respect and remember them.

“Their story will always be our story.”