Klopp eyes Liverpool momentum

Jurgen Klopp hopes to gather momentum in his attempts to impress a signature style upon Liverpool through positive results after edging past Sunderland 1-0 on Wednesday.

Christian Benteke was Klopp’s hero for a second straight game, scoring the all-important goal after also netting in Boxing Day’s 1-0 win over Leicester City.

After a remarkable start to life at Merseyside, damaging defeats to Newcastle United and Watford had left Klopp’s initial feel-good factor waning, but the former Borussia Dortmund boss has a plan to keep Liverpool on the up.

“Football is a lot of things,” Klopp told BBC Radio 5 Live. 

“You have to develop your style, you have to develop your players but at the end you need results, that’s the best thing for confidence. Now we have two good results after a run with no results so it is a good day.

“We can celebrate this a bit and together with the family on New Year’s Eve then it’s the next fight against West Ham. You have to take all points you can get.”

Klopp hailed his players’ work-rate as they ground out a second consecutive clean sheet, as the German gets to grips with the Premier League’s punishing winter schedule.

He added: “Three points, really hard work. This time of the year is really intense, the players have to fight really hard with games every few days.

“It is not the best we can do, we know this, but we had to fight. We knew about Sunderland’s situation. Everyone wants to end the year positively, we can and Sunderland can’t but we take these points, go home, sleep two times and then drive onto West Ham.”