\n<\/p>\n
On whether Salah’s comments on style of play ‘undermine what he is trying to do on the training ground’\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n You are doing a lot of assumptions. First of all, you say that he wants to play that style and then say that it’s not my style. I think Mo was really happy with the style we played last season, and our fans as well, because it led to us winning the league. And I’ve just said that football has changed, football has evolved, but we both, again, want what’s best for Liverpool and that’s for us to compete for trophies, which we haven’t done this season and which we’ve done last season. He and the team \u2013 and I was included in that \u2013 brought the league title back after five years and we would like to challenge for that again next season and continue to evolve the team. So, that is my take on it.<\/p>\n On whether Liverpool’s style of play has changed this season compared to 2024-25\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n I think football has changed and I’ve said this now many times. So, if you play football you’re not the only team on the pitch, you play against another team, and football has changed \u2013 I think we can all see this. I see this every single game, I can go back to it.<\/p>\n Let’s take the game we play in the weekend against Brentford. I saw City, which is still for me one of the teams that plays very nice football, but it took them 60 minutes before they had their first chance. And then they scored 1-0 from a set-piece, by the way, Jeremy Doku had a great one-v-one action and hit the ball in the top corner, and afterwards Brentford were a few times really close of scoring the 1-1 (and had) a penalty incident which was really close. And I think four, five, six years ago, City against Brentford would have been a five, six, seven or 8-0 win for City, but that’s not the reality of the league anymore.<\/p>\n This league has become so strong that football has changed, but we have to find that right balance of still being able to compete but definitely also play the brand and the style of football the fans want to see and I want my team to play.<\/p>\n On what his team are ‘lacking’ when it comes to defending set-pieces\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s not so easy to find one answer because set-pieces come in different fashions \u2013 they come from corner kicks, they come from free-kicks and they come from throw-ins. So, we have to go into every single one of them to see where we had to do better. In general, I think I can safely say that we are not the tallest and the strongest team set-piece-wise. So, mainly my two centre-backs, they’re always very good headers, but that’s for every team. But other teams usually have full-backs, one of the two full-backs that’s really tall, or a number nine or a number six that’s a real powerhouse in defending set-pieces. So, this is something we are now even more aware of than last season, but that’s also, as I said, because the league evolved in a certain way and these are also things we take into account if we are trying to evolve the team towards next season.<\/p>\n On how he evaluates the performances of his Hungarian players this season…<\/strong><\/p>\n Armin (Pecsi) has not played for us, as you know, but he’s developed really good at the training ground. This is also what we had in mind for him \u2013 to be with the team, with the first team, develop him by Xavi Valero, who is a very good goalkeeper coach. He’s in a good place going into next season. Then, of course, there’s Milos (Kerkez), our left full-back. (He) has played a lot of games, has improved during this season. It’s never easy for a new player to come in, in a team that’s not performing at the levels they were performing (at) last season. But I think he’s 21, maybe 22 now, but I think when we signed him for sure (he was) 21. <\/p>\n For a young player like him, making the step from Bournemouth towards Liverpool, playing Champions League and Premier League football, we are really happy with his development, and he needs to make the next step next season. I think a great example for talking about development, in talking about becoming better after one, two, three seasons of playing Premier League football is Dominik Szoboszlai. He’s an example for all of us, but definitely also for Milos. His first season was good, his second season was very good and this season, although the team played far from excellent, I think it’s fair to say that he had an excellent season.<\/p>\n On whether Szoboszlai is a potential future captain…<\/strong><\/p>\n No, Virgil is with us next season, so let’s not look ahead too far. But he’s the captain for the national team, so that already tells you that he has it in him. But as I said, Virgil is still here next season. And the future of a manager is usually only three days, so looking even further than this season, that’s a bit too much for me!<\/p>\n On whether he feels ‘he still has the complete buy-in and support of the squad’\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Social media came when I was already a little bit older, so as people know, I’m not involved in social media, so I don’t really know the understanding of what it exactly means if you like a post, yes or no. What I do know, and that is my world, and that is to see how they train, I haven’t seen anything different compared to the rest of the season. We’ve had a good week and it’s never easy after another disappointment at Villa, going into the last week of the season. Out of experience, I know that’s usually not the most simple week. But we’ve trained, the boys trained really well. And I’m expecting them to do the same in the upcoming two days.<\/p>\n On Salah talking about ‘heavy metal football’ and if ‘he agrees with such a feeling’\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n I think I constantly say the same: we both want what’s best for the club, we both want the club to be successful. That’s the main aim and I have to find a way to evolve this team \u2013 now, but definitely in the summer and the upcoming season \u2013 to be successful again and to play a brand of football that I like. And if I like it then the fans will like it as well. Because I haven’t liked a lot of the way we played this season as well. There were far too many games where we dominated ball possession but it didn’t lead to anything special or any moments. But again, that’s also the way the league has evolved because in general we don’t see the 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, 6-0 games anymore. It’s a close game every single time; not only with us, any single game. But we try to evolve the team in a way, as I said, that we can compete but definitely also play the brand of football, the style of football (that) the fans, I, and hopefully Mo if he’s somewhere else at that moment of time, will like as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On whether Salah’s comments on style of play ‘undermine what he is trying to do<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zeeworld.name.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}