Klopp Content With Fixtures Run, So Far There’s Sufficient Time for Regrouping

Liverpool’s manager Jurgen Klopp, has finally spoken about the current fixture schedule in European football, stressing the need to get used to it sooner rather than later.

The German international said this in his pre-match conference with LFCTV ahead of his side’s Premier League clash against Nottingham Forest on Sunday.

Coming from a Thursday Europa League encounter with Toulouse, Klopp sees the Thursday-Sunday schedule as an avenue for squad rotation.

The 56-year-old said: “Yes, so far we could do it like that,” he replied. “Thursday-Sunday is not great, but it is something we have known really for long enough and that’s fine.

“Yes, there is no real training in between. The boys who didn’t play [on Thursday] will have a proper session [on Friday], so that is good. So they stay in training. But if we would play always the same team, which we did in the past maybe in the Champions League more often, or stuff like this, then there is no training at all, it’s just recovery and go again.

“So far we could do it like that, and because we don’t have too many injuries – it’s always too much but it’s still OK in the moment and hopefully it stays like that – that’s why we can do it.

“It means a lot of players who did not play [against Toulouse] will probably start on Sunday, so for them it’s fine. They had, if you want, a ‘day off’ [on Thursday night], just warming up and kicking a few balls, and now [on Friday] a proper session and then we prepare definitely [for] Nottingham.

“Yes, this rhythm is the rhythm we have this year, and we should get used to it sooner rather than later. So far it was OK, but a Premier League season with European football and all the cup competitions is an intense season. We never had a problem with that, that’s all fine.

“But you need a specific amount of recovery time; as long as we have that, we are ready again.”

Recall that one of Jurgen Klopp’s prized assets Virgil Van Dijk, called for a collaborative protest against fixture congestion earlier this month.