With a 2-0 victory at Bramall Lane, the Reds closed the gap on Arsenal to two points in the Premier League title contest. Even though they were not playing at their most fluid, Liverpool scored the first goal in the 37th minute on a Virgil van Dijk volley. Subsequently, during stoppage time, Dominik Szoboszlai’s brilliant finish validated all three points for the visitors.

The demanding fixture calendar for Liverpool has been dubbed the’most intensive of the season’ by Klopp. They fly to Crystal Palace on Saturday lunchtime, where they will have to make another quick turnaround. The Reds will play three games in a span of seven days.

And the Anfield boss understands that at this critical point, results—rather than spectacular performances—are what matter most. Reporters were informed by Klopp that he was extremely happy with the outcome, which was evidently the ideal outcome, and that he was also happy with many other parts of the game. With the exception of a few instances where we threw the ball away in places where we absolutely shouldn’t have, I would describe it as a fairly mature performance. At such times, the audience seemed to get a little excited.

“Besides that, if you didn’t see the game, you could have heard it because we calmed an atmosphere which was probably ready to go down and didn’t really let it happen, which is really super-important. I don’t want to be overly critical, I know we can play better football, but this time of the year you play, hopefully win, recover and play again. That’s it.”

In comparison to the 4-3 victory over Fulham, Klopp made four changes. Wataru Endo was given just his third Premier League start since moving from Stuttgart by him. And despite Szobozlai’s recent slump, the Liverpool manager continued to play him against United, saying that he had “much improved.”

Klopp added: “I thought he [Endo] played outstanding, to be honest. Dom, much improved I would say. He was really there, really aggressive.

“I liked it and the boys came on and in the end, Dom in the left wing – he can play that position as well. It gives us a few more options. We don’t have that many at the moment but we have a few and will try to use them all.”