Klopp and Reds show they're out to make most of farewell tour
The final curtain is up, the long bow has begun and Jurgen Klopp has his seventh major trophy at Liverpool; and, boy, his team’s battling. exhausting victory over Chelsea in the Carabao Cup Final at Wembley shows they have the appetite for a big farewell tour.
It took every ounce of energy Liverpool had to overcome Mauricio Pochettino’s side in a gruelling final that lacked quality but certainly not effort, and underlined once again how an inspirational Klopp gets the best from his players in every circumstance.
The moment that Virgil van Dijk headed home from a corner in extra time, having earlier seen a goal disallowed, summed up why Klopp is so loved by the Kop and how his team never, ever give up.
How the German dragged this performance out of a side missing 11 players to injury, and with a bench filled almost entirely with youngsters, is a remarkable and now all eyes will be on how they recover to take on a tumultuous fortnight ahead.
It’s not really the right time to look at negatives when you’ve just lifted silverware, but there remains a worry that the Klopp parade could yet be ruined by a procession of injuries that continued at Wembley.
A nasty looking injury to the ankle of Ryan Gravenberch, following a stretching tackle by Moises Caicedo that referee Chris Kavanagh somehow decided wasn’t even a foul, will be high on Klopp’s mind today regardless of the result and the celebrations; and it didn’t look good.
The injury means they now have 12 on the sidelines with another three trophies to play for, and Klopp’s side are clearly missing the impact of Salah, Jota and Nunez in attack, where they were often wasteful.
Few teams in any league can have an injury list in double figures and still compete at the highest
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