Jurgen Klopp admits ‘it’s impossible’ to press Leeds United for 90 minutes

The dust has now settled on Leeds United’s opening day defeat to Liverpool in what must be one of the more exciting opening day Premier League fixtures in recent history. 

Marcelo Bielsa’s side threatened to spring a shock on the reigning champions, equalising on three occasions before Mo Salah eventually punished some poor defending for his hat-trick and the winning goal. 

But there is no doubt that Liverpool realise they were in a game and some of Jurgen Klopp’s comments after make for extremely complimentary reading for Leeds United. 

He was discussing the way that Leeds played the ball out from the back and the marauding runs of full-backs Stuart Dallas and Luke Ayling. 

The German admitted it meant for a formation change to a 4-5-1, rather than a 4-3-3, as to press Leeds high for an entire the game, given the way they play, would be ‘impossible’. 

“The game was like it should have been, minus the three mistakes around the goals,” Klopp told the club’s official website. “Apart from that, it was exactly like it should be.”

“We cannot just press them in their own box always because that’s where they play out, it’s impossible, other teams do it in a similar way, so we needed a compact formation,” Klopp continued. “In our situation, we needed 4-5-1, we needed both wingers 100 per cent involved in defending, we all did that and it helped a lot. So, I’m fine with that.”

Leeds United fans will take great pleasure from hearing how much of a headache their team gave Klopp’s rampant Reds. 

But, unfortunately, some defensive errors need to be eradicated if Leeds are to turn their next impressive performance like this into three points. 

Hopefully, that too won’t be an impossible task.

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