“Six or seven months ago I was the manager of the year and I was going to be this and that, tactically this and tactically that, and now, because we have lost two world-class players, I am useless. But I accept that. I must have just dreamt that about Liverpool playing 3-4-3 in the last game [the Capital One Cup victory at Bournemouth]. What do people think that was, a bit of luck? A British coach playing 3-4-3? A foreign coach doing that would be a tactical genius. I imagine people think I fell into that system through a stroke of luck or something.
“Not that I might have been awake into the early hours of the morning thinking of a solution to our problem. We played with a box midfield and a back three, with [Lazar] Markovic wide and [Raheem] Sterling as a free No9, but it took some thought. I didn’t just throw them out there.”