Jurgen Klopp keen to avenge 'horror show' Brighton defeat with FA Cup triumph
By Tom Gott
Jurgen Klopp has insisted his Liverpool side have learned from their recent thumping at the hands of Brighton ahead of a reunion with the Seagulls in the FA Cup on Sunday.
Two weeks before their upcoming game, Liverpool were given a real humbling by Brighton as Roberto De Zerbi's side roared to an emphatic 3-0 victory which Klopp later described as the worst performance he has ever seen from one of his teams.
Asked what he will do differently this time around, Klopp laughed: "Everything. That's the plan, obviously.
"There's always a new chance. You can always do better. That's what we'll do but Brighton is in a really good moment."
He added: "It's still the worst game I've ever seen from a team of mine, that hasn't changed since then. Pretty much everything went wrong, we've had to change the approach completely, not only against Brighton but in general.
"We did really well in moments during the [next] games. The first half against Chelsea was really disciplined. The second half started well but we got over-excited, we were not that compact anymore, the pressing was not that co-ordinated anymore and then Chelsea had chances. That's something we want to work on, being more compact than we were against Brighton.
"We respect Brighton a lot, for good reasons. We did before the first game as well. But we have to make it more difficult for them, and we will do."
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Klopp stressed that his side have already licked their wounds from the last Brighton game and highlighted how his preparations will not revolve around reviewing mistakes from that 'horror show' defeat.
"We had intense talks after the Brighton game, we had to change immediately and we did," he said. "But now we will not do a meeting where we show all the bad moments from Brighton, it would be a proper horror show. We saw that, we played it.
"It's about general change and improvement of different things. You can lose a game but if you learn from it, it's important as well."
The boss will have no new faces to call upon as he revealed that his injured group of players are still not close to returning.
"Closer? Yes. Imminent? No," he said.
"It will take another few weeks. Luis [Diaz] takes longer. Diogo [Jota], Bobby [Firmino] and Virgil [van Dijk], a couple of weeks and they'll be part of training and then we'll have to see how quick it goes from there."