‘We throw everything we have into that’

Jurgen Klopp was keen to shift focus back to the Premier League after their UEFA Europa League quarter-final exit to Atalanta on Thursday.

With the prospect of a record-equalling 20th league title still on the line, Klopp was keen to take the positives from a much-improved display against the Italians heading into Sunday’s match away at Fulham.

“We won the game and that’s the reaction we wanted to show,” he told TNT Sports. “We knew that it would be difficult; Atalanta deserved to go through and that’s fine and we can now focus on the league. That’s exactly what we’ll do from now.

“There are mixed emotions; disappointed that we’re out, but I’m happy with big parts of the game. Let’s put a line under this competition, we would’ve wished to go to Dublin. That didn’t happen, and now we have one competition left and we throw everything we have into that.”

Klopp reflected in more detail on Thursday’s match and could not fault his players’ desire to try and turn the tie around.

“The two results show we didn’t lose it tonight; we lost it at home,” he explained.

“It was clear that we gave ourselves a massive hurdle. But I liked the game a lot for a long time; the commitment, the power and the desire that the boys showed was incredible.

“If Trent [Alexander-Arnold] was a bit fitter, he could go a bit longer. How he started the game was absolutely insane; they had no clue how to defend that, but he was running out of gas slightly and we missed that. The longer the game went on, we went very offensive, but then lost that structure they changed defensively and pressed us high; we couldn’t create chances properly.

“We won a game, we are back to winning ways now and we have two-and-a-half-ish days’ time to make sure we recover for the game against Fulham, which will be a tricky one.

“We have to see who can go again.”

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