'Have the balls and go for me': Klopp slams criticism of his backroom staff

Jurgen Klopp has slammed the media for the criticism of his head of fitness and conditioning Andreas Kornmayer, after Melissa Reddy's article last week made claims that people at the club found Kornmayer hard to work with.

Other journalists have also written critically about Pep Lijnders, claiming that the assistant coach's influence at Liverpool has grown.

“I just don’t like it if you go for the wrong people,” Klopp said. “Go for me, that is fine, but don’t go for other people. If you praise them in the good times, then criticise them in the bad times. If you don’t praise them in the good times, then don’t do it in the lesser good times.

“Don’t do that — have the balls and go for me. Then the confrontation can happen, of course. But I get an awful lot of money to face these situations and my life is fine. But they all have a career after and stuff like this.

“If we start talking about this — he did this and he did that — then if I listen to people who give me the wrong advice, again that is my fault. And not their fault, just to make sure. I will not change in that department. So just as a little warning.

“And I didn’t even read it, that’s the funny part. It was so much spoken about that, in the end, I got aware of that and that means then it’s a subject. It’s a subject that everybody is talking about, then I have to react. That’s how it is. That was all.”