Pep Lijnders: Liverpool playing styles did not change after Klopp took over

Liverpool's assistant manager Pep Lijnders has denied the Reds' recent success has been fostered by a change in their playing style

Liverpool have gone from strength to strength under Jurgen Klopp and his deputy Lijnders having undergone a complete makeover from the team which Jurgen Klopp inherited in 2015.

The Reds under Brendan Rodgers cleaved to a more Tiki-Taka playing style of football, where centre players do not mostly depend on flankers when going forward.

But since Klopp took over, he has driven the Reds to remarkable successes with his fast and frantic version of 'Gengepressing football.

Over the intervening years Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool side have become a more solid, controlled unit playing the Gegenpressing style, but Lijnders is not conviced it's a change of tactics.

"People always say 'ah Liverpool changed style' no, we never changed style," Lijnders said on the Big Interview podcast.

"We have a more compact team, we are better positioned when we have the ball so they see less hectic moments.

"That is where our focus as a staff lies in each meeting and session. Creating this high-intensity tactical coach of counter-press football and improve our way."

"The better you press, the better you counter-press, the less you run, it is that simple because you don't have to go 60 metres back.

"We call it organised pressing, organised counter-pressing, organised chaos.

"As staff, we are consciously working on what happens before and what happens around [the press].

"That's the organisation and for me, our positional game in the last years has improved so much. What that means is we get better and more control of the games."

"We always say the 30 per cent where we don't have the ball, we want to be different than all the other teams in the league.

"We don't say we want 70 per cent of the ball, we say when we don't have the ball, that is when we want to be different.

"That's our fingerprint, that's our way. Because we believe when we don't have the ball, we dominate that moment if it is counter-pressing.

"And the only way to have that freedom in the attack is to know that when we lose the ball, we can recover it quickly."