Nobody says ‘Go to Real Madrid with 17-year-old guys!’ – that is not fair for them. His appointment has risen expectations on Merseyside and the win against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge will only have increased those.
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Liverpool can jump to eight position in the league table with a win at home against Crystal Palace but the visitors will not make it easy for them.
Philippe Coutinho equalized for Liverpool three minutes before the break – with his third goal in two games – after an assist from Adam Lallana. Palace have a lot of pace on the counter attack and Liverpool’s defence has been far from strong this season.
Tottenham, unbeaten in the league since an opening day defeat by Manchester United, have 21. Liverpool also lost by the same scoreline at Selhurst Park after taking the lead, this time through Rickie Lambert.
Despite losing forward Dwight Gayle to a hamstring injury in the days before the game, Palace started strongly with well-timed challenges from Emre Can and Sakho required to deny Wilfried Zaha and Yohan Cabaye early on. Jon Flanagan, Joe Gomez and Danny Ings will be missing for the foreseeable future, which is a blow for the club. Alan Pardew has advised Connor Wickham to observe Diego Costa, Christian Benteke and Olivier Giroud in his attempts to transform him into the complete modern striker. “It’s a challenge of course, but we have pre-match and post-match analysts who work pretty well”.
The loss to Crystal Palace was Klopp’s first defeat since becoming Liverpool manager, and he will have to wait until after the worldwide break to play his next fixture against league leaders Manchester City.
Liverpool were fortunate not to be two goals in arrears at that point.
With Liverpool returning from a near 5,000-mile round-trip at Russian side Rubin Kazan in the Europa League on Thursday, Eagles boss Pardew spoke to his players about the importance of making a fast start at Anfield.
The team will however have to keep it going and hope to get a win against tough Crystal Palace.
“Whenever I’ve come up against a manager who’s similar to myself on the sidelines – [West Brom’s] Tony Pulis is very tight to the touchline – I never have an issue really, so I don’t expect there to be any kind of issue on Sunday”.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Klopp and his players are immune to criticism, though, and today, Klopp arguably got several things wrong (mainly with team selection), but that’s another article. “The good thing is everybody wants to play the next game”.
After all, when Crystal Palace are in town everyone is expected to follow the rule of the “House of Pards”.
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That victory at Stamford Bridge means that Liverpool go into the weekend four points outside the Champions League qualification positions, and with belief that a season that was beginning to run into trouble could yet bring reason for cheer.
