by Jurgen Klopp has never doubted the quality of Liverpool and was pleased with the way his side recovered from the last setback by overtaking Napoli in Champions League form.
Having come closer than any other team in English football history to winning an unprecedented quadruple, things have gone wrong since falling short in the Premier League and Champions League at the end of last season.
Klopp’s Jekyll-and-Hyde side lost 2-1 at home to Leeds on Saturday night, leading him to reject rumors that this Liverpool side had reached the end of its useful life.
The German side reacted to that defeat with a 2-0 win over Napoli on Tuesday, with late goals from Mohamed Salah and substitute Darwin Nunez scoring a 2-0 triumph as they qualified from Group A as runners-up.
“The reaction I wanted to see,” Klopp said after the Anfield win. “We all agree that we have to show a reaction and we did it in a very difficult match against a really good opponent.
“We don’t doubt the quality. I think no one doubts this quality, but that’s part of the problem. We don’t show it consistently.
“That’s why I quote the second goal against Leeds as an example for our situation. We are chasing the game even when it is around our 18 yard area. You can see that no one wants to take a throw-in for Leeds so he can run out of time and no one is protecting the area, more or less, because everyone thinks we have three players out there and we’re going to win the ball.
“This is a small part of the situation we are in. That’s where we have to take a real step back and we did it tonight.
“When we defended, we defended with everything we have tonight. We were really compact, very close to the challenges and then in the challenges we showed the determination that we have to show.
“We are Liverpool, a great team. Nobody forgot what we did last year, the guys haven’t forgotten but now it’s not important, really.
“I know people might get tired when I say that, but we really have to fight and at the moment football has a good chance of coming back, the real football we can play.
“But tonight we showed everything. We showed pieces of really, really, really good football and the defensive stuff was on a high level.
Napoli are a real force at the moment and therefore it could have been extremely difficult for us tonight, but the guys played a really good match.
“Once again, consistency, stability is what we need to achieve.
“We will take the good things out of this game and then we will start the next match against Tottenham.”
Salah’s goal in the 85th minute saw him equal Liverpool’s record of 41 goals in Europe for the big club Steven Gerrard.
The Egyptian international headed home after Nunez’s opening shot was saved, before the substitute scored for the third straight European game with the last kick in injury time.
“Absolutely good,” Klopp said of Nunez’s impact.
“In these matches, for us, obviously it wasn’t a massive rotation match because of the situation, but we had to do it a little bit and that’s why we didn’t start all three (regular strikers) because we need to see how we will get past a goal. .
“Curtis (Jones) did really well in a position unknown to him.
“When you can bring a fresh player with the quality of Darwin, it’s very useful.”
The only potential downside on Tuesday night was that James Milner was injured by the already depleted Reds early in the second half.
Asked about the severity of the problem, Klopp said: “I don’t know. He seemed to be fine now, but we will probably have to do more checks. “
