Liverpool focused on Southampton

Jurgen Klopp has stressed his Liverpool sides sole attention, is on Southampton in the Capital One cup quarter final tomorrow night and not any potential semi final opponents.

Liverpool travel to St Mary’s tomorrow evening, with the aim to progress into the cup semi finals. The Reds have beaten both Carlisle and Bournemouth on the way to the quarter final.

Klopp was asked how the prospect of winning the Capital One cup in his first season appealed to him and if it affected his approach to the game.

Klopp said:

“The quarter-final is far away from the final. When you are in the final, you have to be prepared to be in a good situation and have a squad in a good run.

“It is really far away but, of course, to win a title the only possibility is to go through all the rounds. This is a very important round with only eight teams in the tournament. It’s quite interesting.

“I’m excited, of course, and I’m looking forward to the game. We have to respect the situation, our situation, and the situation of Southampton.

“In this moment, I can’t say which team I can play tomorrow because the last game was only two days ago. That’s the thing. We want to win. It’s a difficult game against Southampton, but to win titles is a cool thing.

“We only have to think about Southampton. It’s not important who could be in the semi-final. That’s the biggest fault you can make – to think about the next round and who we can get.

“It’s only Southampton and they are strong enough, they lost their last two games and so they want to strike back. If we want to go to the semi-final we have to fight for it and that’s what we’ll try to do.

When asked on whether the two players who made their long awaited returns at the weekend – Jordan Henderson and Daniel Sturridge, would be available, The Reds boss had this to say:

“Now the problem with the Southampton game is we cannot ignore that it could be extra-time. I’m sure 120 minutes would be too much for both.

“We don’t have to think about starting, we cannot go into a game and know we have to change these two players for sure. But if nothing happens from now until the plane has started, they’ll join us and be in the squad and we again have these two options.”

He also gave an update on Philippe Coutinho’s fitness, the Brazilian has missed Liverpool’s past two games with a slight hamstring injury:

“I cannot make decisions in this moment because we have another training [session] today.

“At the end, we have to talk about everything again with the medical department and talk to Phil. It will be close, possible, but we have to check and double check the situation and then we’ll make a decision. We have to wait.”