Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp denied bowing to public pressure despite dropping goalkeeper Loris Karius for Wednesday night’s 3-0 win over Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium.
Karius paid the price for recent blunders as he was replaced by Simon Mignolet in the starting line-up, but Klopp said he fully expected the 23-year-old to bounce back.
Mignolet pulled off a superb save to deny Viktor Fischer when his side led 1-0, but Liverpool were emphatic winners in the end with two goals from Adam Lallana and one for Divock Origi.
Klopp said: “I know how strong Loris Karius is and unfortunately he couldn’t show it in the last two, three or four games. I’m not interested in public pressure but I am interested in the boy and there is no reason to push him through the situation.
“There’s no reason, especially when you have a goalkeeper like Simon Mignolet in training and on the bench who is a really good goalkeeper. There’s no reason to push Loris through and that’s why we made the change quite early, and that’s all.
“I’m really happy with our goalkeeping situation. We have three outstanding young goalkeepers so the goalkeeping situation at Liverpool is really good, and that’s why there’s no reason to push one through.
“We want to develop the players. We don’t want to convince people that he’s not bad. We are fine with our boys. Loris is very young and a great talent and everything will be very good in the end but there is no time-frame for when he will be back.”
Liverpool poured on the style in the second half in arguably the most impressive performance seen at the Riverside for some time, but Klopp insisted there was plenty of room for improvement after a closer fight in the first half.
“I’m thrilled with the result and the performance was really good and even then we have something to improve,” the German added.
“We were better in the second half and we saw how the boys took the information.
“The first half was already good but a little bit more intense than it should have been.
“The second half was much better – 3-0 is the deserved result but we could have finished more often and it was a really good performance.”
