Jurgen Klopp hailed Liverpool’s 2-1 victory at Tottenham as the “best game of the season” so far, after extending their 100 percent record to five games.
Goals from Georginio Wijnaldum and Roberto Firmino were enough to seal the three points at Wembley, though Erik Lamela’s late strike ensured a difficult end.
Maintaining their winning streak, Liverpool are near-guaranteed to finish the weekend top of the Premier League, after also beating West Ham, Crystal Palace, Brighton and Leicester City.
While the 4-0 thrashing of the Hammers on the opening weekend remains their biggest result so far—and three points are three points—Klopp is encouraged by the Reds’ development.
Speaking to reporters after the game, he explained how he feels this was Liverpool’s best and most complete performance of the season so far:
“The performance today, for me, was better than the result.
“The result is most important, it was perfect, winning here is unbelievably difficult.
“But I would never expect that only because we came here and tried, you need a really outstanding performance.
“And that was what the boys delivered today. We could have scored more, but we controlled the game in a way.
“It was the best game of the season for us, for sure, especially because in all the games [before] we had really good moments, but today we had 85 brilliant minutes.
“Unfortunately we didn’t finish the game off. Tottenham have the quality to strike back—that’s what they did.
“But then nothing happened any more. So I’m really happy about the performance, proud of the performance.
“The boys came back Wednesday, Thursday, we trained yesterday, then playing our football in that way, that’s really nice for a manager.”
That this victory came at the start of a busy run of seven tough games in 23 days is all the more impressive, setting a marker for the fixtures to come.
Next up is Paris Saint-Germain at Anfield on Tuesday, before clashes with Southampton (H), Chelsea (H), Chelsea (A), Napoli (A) and Man City (H) ahead of the October international break.
It would be a phenomenal showing if Liverpool manage not to drop any points over that period, but while Klopp insisted “nobody plays a perfect season,” he is clearly confident.
“I don’t have the personality to wait for problems, but I’m old enough to know they will come.
“It was not really often a surprise in my life when I had some.
“We all have the same situation in a football team, I’m long enough in this business now to know that nobody plays a perfect season.
“Not even City last year played a perfect season!
“It’s no problem, it’s still early. Five games, fantastic, we won all of them, we improved during them.
“So far the best [result] was the first matchday—but it depended a bit on the opponent, maybe—and now this today was by far the best performance of the season.
“I like that development, to be honest. Now we have to prove that, and do it again and again and again, and we will see if we can do so.”
The main concern heading into Tuesday’s Champions League clash will be the availability of Roberto Firmino, whose eye injury forced him off with 16 minutes to play at Wembley.
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