Klopp proud of Liverpool performance but pained by fresh injury woe

The German coach hailed his players's response to defeat at West Ham against Stoke City but was disheartened by the injuries suffered by Dejan Lovren and Philippe Coutinho.The combativeness and discipline Liverpool displayed in their 1-0 League Cup victory over Stoke City made Jurgen Klopp proud, but the manager was also pained by a double injury blow.Finishing aside, the Reds were much improved in the first leg of their semi-final at the Britannia Stadium but the loss of Dejan Lovren and Philippe Coutinho to hamstring problems took some shine off the performance.Klopp had already been forced to replace Mamadou Sakho, who has a minor knee problem, with Kolo Toure and with the Ivorian suffering from cramp late in the game and Martin Skrtel still sidelined, the German faces the prospect of having no senior center-backs at his disposal.

If we’d scored one or two goals more then maybe [it would have been perfect], Klopp reflected.In this part of the season after the last game, it is always easy to criticize things - you can say we have to make this better, or make that better. "But as a football game with our start, how we continued, how we stood in the game and how we defended first the playing build-up of Stoke, then the long balls, and how smart we were in defensive things, with pressing, coming out and moving - it was really good.But it’s a big, big shadow for us over the game that we cannot ignore – we have two injuries [Coutinho and Lovren] and I honestly don’t know how serious they are. They did not look too good and so we have to wait.At 1-0, or even 2-0, nothing is decided in the first leg of a semi-final. We’ll have to see what we can do after this game.
It’s a little bit of a strange feeling – on one side it’s very, very good because we won the game and played well, the players fought brilliantly.I was really angry a few days ago, but tonight I am proud because the reaction was great and it was such a difficult game in all parts. But, two injuries - that’s not good. Klopp is expected to shuffle his limited options for Friday’s FA Cup meeting at Exeter, and the manager has also admitted the club may look to add reinforcements in the January transfer window.