Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has asked the media to ease off on goalkeeper Loris Karius following his latest howler against Tranmere Rovers.
Karius’ bundled a routine save in the second-half of Liverpool’s 3-2 win to allow Jonny Smith the opportunity to pounce and score his first goal on debut for Tranmere.
The mishap from Karius follows a similar mistake he made in Liverpool’s warm-up against Chester and the two game-altering mistakes he made in Liverpool’s 3-1 loss to Real Madrid in last season’s Champions League final.
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Klopp said that Karius will be heavily scrutinised by the media and fans until he can string together some consistent performances for the club but that the media can help by stop asking about his obvious mistakes.
“Yeah, it will probably happen for a while until he has a few fantastic games, that is how the situation is,” said Klopp.
“We cannot change that. Our job is to perform and you do what you do and that is part of the deal.
“You (the media) can all stop it immediately – promise? You never ask again, that would be one little step.
“It is obvious, we don’t have to hide it. Yes he could have made that save even though the shot was not easy to deal with.
“I’ve seen this situation 500 times at least in my life – ‘Bam’, against the chest, (ball) going down.
“Now Loris concedes that goal but we cannot start the story always after each mistake. Mistakes will happen.
“I don’t like it, you don’t like it, he doesn’t like it, but they do happen. So let’s carry on and make the best of all these situations to learn from it.
“No-one likes that goal but if we talk about the second goal I think it was Millie’s (James Milner’s) fault together with (Pedro) Chirvella.
“Two brilliant footballers make this mistake, which one was the bigger? I would say the second one but we don’t talk about that.”
Elsewhere Klopp said that he was impressed by the performances of forwads Divock Origi and Daniel Sturridge and added that he will give the duo time to show that they deserve to stay at Liverpool following respective loan spells at West Bromwich Albion and Wolfsburg last season.
“They have all the quality, you can see that, you saw it four or five days ago that they are all really good football players, but it’s not to show and we have our ideas,” added the German.
“The boys, we need them. We play the games, we have the training sessions, they are nice fellas so it’s nice to have them around and then let’s see how it fits at the end.
“But it’s all about the boys, my door is that wide open so why should I make a decision today? I watch the games, I lead the sessions and then I make a decision at a specific point, but that’s not today and it’s not next week so we have still time.
“Everybody has a place [here]. I would be really crazy if I would not give these boys a chance – they are fantastic players, they’ve played fantastic games, so we will see what happens.”
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