From today's presser:
On the banner of support for him placed at Anfield over the weekend and speculation regarding his future…
"So, I heard about both. The banner is nice obviously – not necessary, I don’t think. I don’t feel that I need special support in the moment or whatever. But it’s nice, very nice. What was the other thing? That I could leave? That I could get the sack or leave by myself [or take a break]? [Laughs] Neither, nor. I don’t need a break. Look, the last thing I want to do is talk about private things in a press conference, but meanwhile everybody knows – yes, privately, we had an absolutely tougher time but that was not only now for three weeks ago or whatever, that was a much longer time already and we always dealt with it as a family, 100 per cent. And when I came here to the football club, to work, I’m 53, I worked in football for 30 years, as a coach for 20 years, I can split things. I can switch off one thing and the other thing, I don’t carry things around. If I’m private, I’m private. If I’m in football, at the workplace, then I’m here. Of course we are influenced by things that happen around, but nobody has to worry about me or whatever. I am, honestly – I might not look like this because the weather is not cool, I’m white and the beard gets more and more grey, all these kind of things, yes, I don’t sleep a lot, that’s all true and my eyes look [tired], that’s all fine – but I'm full of energy.
Honestly, the situation is a challenge. I don’t want to have the situation but now we are in [it] and now I see it as a challenge, an interesting challenge. I cannot ask a lot of people, nobody wrote a book about how did you come in a situation like that and how did you sort it. But we will sort it. Will we sort it and please everybody while we are doing it? Could be tricky. But sorting it by playing football, sorting it by sticking even more together, sorting it by fighting with all we have, sorting it by learning more than you can learn in each season we played before. Yeah, that’s actually the plan we have.
Strange things happen injury-wise, if somebody comes to me and tells me we have a player with a minor problem I can tell then it’s a centre-half; that’s how it is all the time. It’s unbelievable. Without knowing who it is I would say, ‘OK, centre-half. Who is available in the moment and he has a problem.’ That’s the whole season like this and I don’t know why this happens. How I said, we learned a lot.
But in the moment a lot of people obviously are not happy with the results. I get that. And I am responsible for that, 100 per cent. But we played still some pretty good stuff. You [the media] can forget that, we cannot because that’s the start for changing the things. That you change the situation like we are in with bad football, I never heard about. The result, yes, you need the result but we are Liverpool, we cannot sit back and wait for another team [for] 60 minutes until they come over the halfway line. We have to be dominant, we have to play football and we do that. So, a massive challenge – I’m ready, the boys are ready and we give our absolute everything to sort it.
And thanks for all the support. I don’t read it, I don’t really see it, but people tell me and I’m very, very grateful for these kinds of things. But they can really think about other things because nobody has to worry about me."
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