Last week Mohamed Salah was voted the Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year. He has missed out on the award in years gone by when perhaps he should have won it. It’s swings and roundabouts really. This year he has maybe been slightly less prosperous with his goals than in other years, but he’s still been brilliant.
I think Sadio Mane has been brilliant as well to be quite honest and who knows, if we had got Luis Diaz at the start of the season, he might have been in with a shot as well.
Pep Guardiola’s comments about Salah winning the award ahead of Kevin De Bruyne were stupid. Absolutely idiotic. It’s something that Klopp wouldn’t do and that’s where you can see the class of Jurgen. He would pat him on the back and say ‘Kevin De Bruyne, brilliant. Enjoy.’ You don’t come out with comments like Pep did. You don’t benefit from it. It’s idiotic from such a good coach.
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Strategic changes only for Champions League semi-final
The Reds are just 90 minutes away from another European Cup final. You can’t take anything for granted but I’m sure there will be a couple of changes against Villarreal in Spain. I think Thiago will come in with Fabinho and Trent (Alexander-Arnold) will maybe come back in. Ibrahima Konate will return and maybe even Kostas Tsimikas. You can rely on Kostas. He’s very good.
But the game is more about what Villarreal do. They’ve got to show more intent. At Anfield they didn’t come out of their own half. They might as well risk getting beat 5-0 and go for it. If they do that and they come out (to play), it’s at your peril against Liverpool. It will be interesting to see how they go about it. Let’s hope they make a game of it and go for it. But the one thing Jurgen will say before it even kicks off is remember Barcelona. They came to Anfield 3-0 up and we beat them 4-3, so take nothing for granted. It can happen so make sure that it doesn’t happen to us. End of story.
Quadruple unlikely but shouldn't be given up on
It's incredible that Liverpool still have the chance to win a trophy quadruple this season and most of it is still in our hands. The FA Cup is in our hands, so is the Champions League. We’re well capable of winning them both. But the league - I don’t think so. If it was in our hands by a point, I’d say yes. But we’re just relying on another team. We can’t just rely on ourselves. But we’ve got to keep on going.
I think we’ll get two and out of the three, but I just can’t see Manchester City slipping up. However, if Liverpool were to face Manchester City in the Champions League final, we’d have an immediate opportunity to get them back. It would be a big opportunity and it is in a competition that they still haven’t won, even with the billions that they have thrown at the club. That’s the one that they want. If we were to stop them getting it, that would make up somewhere down the line for missing out on the league. But right now it’s all ifs and buts. Anything could happen.
