Liverpool’s Klopp calls for consistency ahead of Sunderland game

REUTERS – Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp has called on his team to be more consistent ahead of Wednesday’s Premier League game against lowly Sunderland.

Before Liverpool’s hard-fought 1-0 league victory over high-flying Leicester City on Saturday, the Reds had picked up one point from three games, including shock defeats by Newcastle United and Watford.

“There’s no doubt about the individual quality of the players, there’s no doubt about the character. What we have to create is a stable level of performance, that’s what we have to work on,” Klopp told reporters on Tuesday.

“Now the next station is Sunderland and we have to go there and be concentrated from the first second, like we were against Leicester.

“(It was) a really good start in that game — I was happy about this — and now we have to do it again. That’s the thing. If we do this, then we can get results in a row. But it’s no presents, we have to work for it.”

Sunderland are second-bottom in the standings, five points adrift of safety, while Liverpool are 10th.

“We don’t want to go there and show how football should be. We’ll go there and want to win – that’s what we have to show,” Klopp said.

“There’s no reason to doubt the mentality of the team that they’ll maybe think ‘it’s only Sunderland’ or anything like that.”

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru, editing by Ed Osmond)