Jurgen Klopp insisted injuries were to blame as he sent out an inexperienced Liverpool side in their FA Cup third round tie at Exeter on Friday and admitted he barely knew some of the players.
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Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp felt it was impossible to plan for his side’s FA Cup draw at Exeter City. Ribeiro was last season’s Player of the Year at St James’ Park and will provide the club with a major boost ahead of the glamorous cup clash.
Allardyce claimed Klopp had underestimated how “ferocious” the Premier League is, and the spate of hamstring injuries were down to his insistence on a high-tempo pressing game, when he spoke to talkSPORT on Wednesday.
Klopp is set to make wholesale changes after confirming he isn’t willing to take a risk with his key men due to the lengthy injury list he’s having to cope with at present.
Already ruled out were Philippe Coutinho, Dejan Lovren and Kolo Toure, all injured in the 1-0 win at Stoke in the Capital One Cup semifinal on Tuesday.
With the crisis becoming a serious problem, Ryan Kent and Sheyi Ojo have returned from loan spells at Coventry and Wolves respectively. We know that the Football League Two team is out to show the world they can take it to the bigger team. We’ve got a home tie, which is unusual for us over the past decade, and we got number 23, which was one of the ones that we were looking out for.
Liverpool earned the replay with a 74th minute equaliser from Australian defender Brad Smith, a replay which will be worth an estimated £700,000 to the League Two club.
“I thought both goals were really unlucky for us”, he said. “We didn’t park the bus, we gave it a right go and we’ve got a trip to Anfield”.
On that occasion, Klopp was outraged by a challenge on Mamadou Sakho by Jeremain Lens, the Sunderland substitute, and vented his anger at Allardyce, who subsequently dismissed the Liverpool manager’s outrage as the antics of a “soft German”.
Liverpool now have eight first-team players out of action, and Allardyce has suggested that Klopp underestimated the “ferocity” of the Premier League. If we go out, you have to criticise us, no problem, but we have to think about more than only one game. “For this you need players, a little bit of luck with injuries but we haven’t had too much of this”.
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“Phil had a problem with a -hamstring a few weeks ago. I don’t want to do that”, he said, hoping to whisk away the stereotype of the lower league side parking the bus when up against the big boys.
