On using Salah ‘more infield’ and what the thinking behind that was…

The thinking was not only about Mo, the thinking is about a lot of things. You always try to prepare your team in a way that can help them during the game. But I think tonight is not about tactics, it’s mainly about the work they’ve put in, the support they got from the fans. And then, of course, tactics can help. But this work-rate, this intensity, this combination of play is always more important than tactics. But unfortunately we’ve played this tactic before – Frankfurt away, Inter Milan away and some other games – but usually this season then we’ve got a player injured, we couldn’t do it again because then we miss out on a certain type in a certain position.

So, we’ve used this tactic before but unfortunately even tonight Joe Gomez couldn’t play, not really helpful, of course, when when I had to take Jeremie Frimpong off but Curtis [Jones] again did a great job. This has been our season that every time when we think we find the system or we think we find the right style of play then someone gets injured and then we don’t have the similar fit, so we have to adapt and change again. But that’s part of being a manager, so you can’t complain about that.

On being ‘energetic’ on the touchline…

I think it was mainly the connection between the players and the fans. I hope that the fans were more focused on how the players played than what I was doing down the line. But at a certain moment enough is enough. I faced it now far too many times that we are trying to create momentum, we are trying to play and then someone is on the floor again for half an hour. Enough is enough, so I thought I had to do something about it.

I’ve tried it many times to go to the fourth official to influence, to say, ‘Are you aware? Are you aware? Are you aware now?’ Never ever this season we got the extra time that we deserved. So that’s why I said what I said to the fans before the game – we have to create something to fight this together, because this is very difficult. It’s not a tactic I can do something against, except for running around like a lunatic down a line maybe. So maybe I have to do this more often. But I hope it gets noticed more and more by the people who have to do something about it.

On whether this game can set the ‘blueprint’ for the rest of the season…

Yeah, but it’s not as simple as you think to say, ‘OK, if you can bring this tonight, you can bring this effort every single game you have.’ There’s an opponent to play against, there’s a style of play. There are so many factors that why we could bring tonight what we could bring. I think it’s fair to say for me – especially for all of you because you are following Liverpool so many times – that Anfield and the players can also rise to the occasion. I think there have been many, many, many moments or parts of games where we showed this but usually we have 10 minutes where we drop down a little bit or the other team takes over and that’s 99 out of 100 times have been the moments where we conceded because that’s the first chance of them and they scored.

Now today that didn’t happen because we did not concede at all and we didn’t drop at all in terms of our intensity. So yeah, we would like us to perform every single time at this level. Unfortunately, for the fifth, sixth time now, I think that we only get two days’ rest to go to Brighton, early kick-off. For me, that’s not realistic. You see more and more players get injured in this period of time because it’s such a tight schedule. We should have [been] given a bit more rest but that hasn’t happened a lot to us this season. Brighton is an intense team we’re going to face and we will bring the best game possible again on Saturday. But you cannot compare Brighton to Galatasaray, or you cannot compare Tottenham to Galatasaray. Every game has its own story. I hope this is the standard we are looking for, so let’s see if we can bring that every single time from now on.