Arsenal were cut to ribbons by Liverpool at Anfield on Saturday, the Reds providing a fine counter-attacking display.
Liverpool showed no signs of fatigue from their midweek Champions League match, used a counter-attacking masterclass to dismantle Arsenal in a highly convincing 4-0 Premier League victory at Anfield.
A 6-3 aggregate victory over Hoffenheim, completed on Wednesday, clinched a return to the Champions League but did not appear to take its toll on Liverpool, who were full of energy as they punished a shambolic display from Arsenal.
Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and second-half substitute Daniel Sturridge all scored to ensure Liverpool would go into the international break unbeaten in all competitions.
“All that we are doing must have to be independent from [absent] players,” Klopp told his postmatch news conference.
“If we miss too many [absent players] then you have no chance. Nobody can do the same.
“We never thought about who we miss, even when we know how big the problems are when you don’t have these quality players involved.
“I’m not pleased about it, I expected it. That’s the job we have to do. You will never hear an excuse because we couldn’t deliver because of this or that.
“It’s intense, it’s all intense. We all know we cannot line up the same 11 players for five or six months, we need to have opportunities to change different positions.
“Today we decided for rhythm and confidence. I really thought a lot about the lineup. They all looked so positive after the Hoffenheim game in training and I thought: ‘Come on, let’s try again.’ Obviously it worked.
“So far in the season, we learned from each performance, from each game we played, different things.
“We played an outstandingly good game against Hoffenheim and today it was the next step because we did it again. That probably was the biggest challenge for us today.
“We need to learn that we can learn to do things like this [every] three or four days because otherwise we get a problem during the season. We wanted to show it today. We wanted to prove it to ourselves. We wanted to be spot on from the first second. We wanted to show our greed, our ambitions against a very strong side.
“You can never know if you can win a game, but we didn’t actually think about winning the game, we thought about the performance. The performance was perfect and the result is the result of the performance.”
It was another terrific performance against a top six opponent by Liverpool. But we have seen this before. Since Klopp has arrived at Anfield, Liverpool have a terrific record against the top six. It is the bottom six where Liverpool have struggled in the last two years, and Klopp has to learn to get his side up for Watford as much as they are to play Arsenal.
