How Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah reacted to being dropped by Jurgen Klopp

Jurgen Klopp hasn’t been afraid to rotate his side in recent

weeks, including star men Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah .

The Liverpool manager has been keen to keep his squad

fresh with a busy Christmas period ahead and he has

dropped several key players in the past week.

In the Merseyside derby, he left Salah, Roberto Firmino and

Jordan Henderson on the bench but the players who did

start repaid his faith as the Reds beat their local rivals 5-2 at

Anfield.

It was a similar story on Saturday afternoon.

Seven changes were made for the clash with Bournemouth,

with Mane and Trent Alexander-Arnold among those

dropping out, but Premier League leaders Liverpool were too

strong and ran out 3-0 winners.

While his players are desperate to play, Klopp insists they

understand and respect his tactical decisions and revealed

he doesn’t even speak to his key stars when he’s about to

leave them out of the team.

‘For me it’s not too difficult, I only make the decisions and

it’s done,’ he said.

‘I didn’t speak to Sadio or Div now. I didn’t speak to Bobby

or Mo or Hendo before the last game.

‘I didn’t speak or ask them, I just made a decision. Next time

everybody knows somebody else will play and then it’s the

next game and the next game so that’s what happens now.

‘I have a really smart group of players. They look at the

schedule, they see that’s how it is. We carry on and need

everybody.

”Today we had 14 adult players plus Curtis and Harvey.

That’s our squad for today. The only players who are maybe

back for Tuesday are Gini Wijnaldum and Adam Lallana to

make it 16.

‘If somebody in that small squad is concerned or angry that

he’s not starting this or that game, I can’t help them.

‘Today the people were shouting for Divock Origi. I get that, I

loved the performance of Divock Origi (against Everton) but

bringing him on just to say thank you when we have so many

games.

‘It was wonderful that we didn’t have to and the best part of

the game was that we didn’t have to use Sadio Mane. He

has been an all-time player in the last couple of weeks.

‘We’ll see how we start on Tuesday, I have no idea about

that now. But we could give these two, plus Gini (Wijnaldum)

and Adam (Lallana), so four players kind of a rest and

hopefully they are all fit again for Tuesday and we will make

decisions’