their 1-0 League Cup victory over Stoke City made Jurgen
Klopp proud, but the manager was also pained by a double
injury blow.
Finishing aside, the Reds were much improved in the first leg
of their semi-final at the Britannia Stadium but the loss of
Dejan Lovren and Philippe Coutinho to hamstring problems
took some shine off the performance.
Klopp had already been forced to replace Mamadou Sakho,
who has a minor knee problem, with Kolo Toure and with the
Ivorian suffering from cramp late in the game and Martin
Skrtel still sidelined, the German faces the prospect of
having no senior centre-backs at his disposal.
"If we’d scored one or two goals more then maybe [it would
have been perfect]," Klopp reflected.
"In this part of the season after the last game, it is always
easy to criticise things - you can say we have to make this
better, or make that better.
"But as a football game with our start, how we continued,
how we stood in the game and how we defended first the
playing build-up of Stoke, then the long balls, and how smart
we were in defensive things, with pressing, coming out and
moving - it was really good.
"But it’s a big, big shadow for us over the game that we
cannot ignore – we have two injuries [Coutinho and Lovren]
and I honestly don’t know how serious they are. They did
not look too good and so we have to wait.
"At 1-0, or even 2-0, nothing is decided in the first leg of a
semi-final. We’ll have to see what we can do after this
game.
"It’s a little bit of a strange feeling – on one side it’s very,
very good because we won the game and played well, the
players fought brilliantly.
"I was really angry a few days ago, but tonight I am proud
because the reaction was great and it was such a difficult
game in all parts. But, two injuries - that’s not good."
Klopp is expected to shuffle his limited options for Friday’s
FA Cup meeting at Exeter, and the manager has also
admitted the club may look to add reinforcements in the
January transfer window.
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