Jurgen Klopp smashes Sir Alex Ferguson’s Man Utd record with incredible feat as Liverpool stars conquer ‘inner enemies’
JURGEN KLOPP claims his Liverpool mentality monsters have conquered their "inner enemy" to climb to the top of the Premier League.
But it has required all hands on deck to overcome fatigue and keep coming back from behind.
No top-flight boss has made more changes to his starting line-up nor used more subs in all this season than Klopp.
That has helped Liverpool to recover a staggering 18 points from losing positions after Harvey Elliott’s stoppage-time winner at Crystal Palace at the weekend.
Under Klopp, the Reds’ 17 injury-time winners is now higher than Manchester United’s ‘Fergie Time’ era under their legendary boss Sir Alex.
Klopp said: “The bad thing about the amount of games we’re playing is that it’s really tiring. The good thing is that everyone gets to play.
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“It’s tough. These boys play an awful lot of football and sometimes their inner enemy is louder than it is at other moments. It’s all about the mindset.
“A lot of the boys have been struggling with that but we have been able to change things from the bench because we don’t just change the players, we also change the system.
“But it’s still down to the players to take advantage of these little helping hands that we give them.
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“It’s a very similar situation to when we won the Champions League [2018–19] and when we won the Premier League [2019–20].
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“Everyone thinks we used the same team all the time but we had Fabinho, Jordan Henderson, Gini Wijnaldum, James Milner, Adam Lallana, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Naby Keita in midfield and up front we had Mo Salah, Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino, Xherdan Shaqiri, Divock Origi and Takumi Minamino.
“That’s what you need to make a difference and now we have that quality again.
“That allows us to make the moves we did at Crystal Palace when we sent on Cody Gakpo, Elliott and Curtis Jones. We were able to completely change our shape to win the game.
“We can play with different systems but at the moment we have to work with the players who are physically available. We are playing three games a week.”
Elliott became the 11th Reds sub to score this term and Klopp has made 138 changes to his starting XI in all competitions and another 104 from the bench.
With top spot confirmed, Klopp can rest his stars for Thursday’s Europa League trip to Union Saint-Gilloise ahead of Sunday’s game with Manchester United.
Then they face a Carabao Cup last-eight tie with West Ham on December 20 before a Prem clash with Arsenal three days later.