The spotlight is firmly on Jurgen Klopp and his side after their third defeat of the season but he is not shying away from it as outside pressure has nothing on internal expectations.
It’s been a rough start to the season, to say the last, with just 16 points secured after 11 league games having already dropped points on seven different occasions.
It’s a stark contrast to the Liverpool side that were two games away from history merely a few months ago, but Klopp is not one to shirk responsibility.
In the press, he can come across as short and prickly when results do not go Liverpool’s way but that is a reflection of his own standards and that of his team.
He would be the first to concede when the job to find a solution is no longer best placed in his hands, but it has not yet come to that throughout his managerial career.
And in the aftermath of Steven Gerrard‘s sacking at Aston Villa, Klopp was asked about how he navigates the pressure of the job from outside sources, his response true to what we’ve seen over the last seven years.
“I couldn’t be bothered, to be honest,” Klopp said of outside pressure to BT Sport, prior to the loss at Nottingham Forest.
"I couldn't be bothered.
"The pressure you put on yourself is much bigger."
Jürgen Klopp discusses coping with managerial pressures in light of Steven Gerrard's departure from Aston Villa. pic.twitter.com/2A19c23sdK
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) October 22, 2022
“I understand it, 100 percent, but for me it’s different. I never got the sack, I can’t really explain why.
“We had difficult situations at my previous clubs and I never got the feeling that somebody wanted me to be out. That’s my situation.
“Apart from that, the pressure you make on yourself is much bigger than the outside world could ever do.
“I know when things don’t go well, I just don’t have this one solution where I say, ‘OK, the manager is the wrong one’.
“If I would feel that I’d be the first arm up and say, ‘ladies and gentlemen that is it for me here’. 100 percent.
“But as long as that is not the case, my job is to find solutions and not hide away in different situations.
“For me, the big difference is the owners, or the president – in Germany, we have a different structure – they always thought I’m the one who should sort the situation.
“The pressure is there, of course, but I really think for all of us the inside pressure is much bigger than the outside pressure.
“The outside is just talk, I never listen.
“When I reacted on Didi Hamann it was not that because he mentioned that people could think about my sacking, it was about all the other things he said over the years.
“I was just in a mood.”
The spotlight will not be drifting too far from Liverpool and Klopp after defeat at Forest but there will not be a shortage of man-hours put into turning the tide, starting at Ajax on Wednesday.
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