Jurgen Klopp was happy and downbeat in equal measure after our 1-0 win over the Potters on Wednesday night.
He had just watched his side churn out a great performance on the much-fabled wet Tuesday night in Stoke, but also saw Lovren and Coutinho both leave the pitch in the first half with hamstring injuries.
In his post-match interview he praised the side but also admitted he badly needs to sign a defender during the transfer window.
“I was angry last week but now I’m proud because it was such a difficult game”, he said.
Read what the boss had to say about tonight’s win over @stokecity: https://t.co/T0H5bERjvQ pic.twitter.com/Es7s1N6FRw
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) January 5, 2016
“The only thing we can criticise is our finishing again. We had a good structure, played football good, everything was good but we don’t make enough goals”.
Despite his happiness at the result, he was visibly annoyed at the injuries: “The biggest problem for us is we have two and maybe three injured players again.”
“We cant ignore the injuries, we don’t know how serious they are but it does not look too good. We have to wait. We don’t train, we only recover – that’s the situation.”
Klopp was even willing to shoulder some of the blame when asked if his training methods were to blame, saying “I’m responsible for these things and if you want to make me responsible, then that’s ok, that’s the next step.”
The biggest story of the post-match interview, however, was that he now wants to sign a centre back during this transfer window.
“Two weeks ago, we had three (centre-backs). That’s a good situation”, he said. “When we started the season we had five including Joe Gomez”.
“[However,] in this situation with no centre-backs fit, I would say [transfers] are something we could look at” (via Echo).
JK: “In this situation with no centre-backs fit I would say [transfers] is something we could look at.” #LFC
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) January 5, 2016
SEE MORE Liverpool fans despair on Twitter Liverpool’s injured XI Liverpool rating vs Stoke
We have been linked with former Klopp disciple Neven Subotic in recent weeks (via Metro), but the sources are unreliable and in truth his form hasn’t been close to the Subotic we saw in 2011/12 for a long time. Another rumour doing the rounds is that we want Schalke defender Joel Matip (via SkySports). Sky are undoubtedly a more reliable source than the Metro, and in our opinion the 6 foot 4 German-born Cameroon international is a much better option than Subotic. Who would you buy? Let us know in the comments.