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Even though his controversial decision to rest his stars for the Merseyside derby came back to haunt him, Jurgen Klopp has vowed to continue rotating his squad. Albion fans can expect to see both of Liverpool's Brazilian stars tonight. But the bad news for Albion fans is that it’s unlikely Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino are going to miss tonight’s match. The Liverpool boss made six changes for Sunday’s match with Everton, which they ended up drawing 1-1 after a late Wayne Rooney penalty cancelled out the red hot Mohamed Salah’s 19th goal of the season. Klopp is trying to avoid a repeat of last season, when injuries and unavailability cost his side, who won just once in January.
And even though Coutinho and Firmino will start against the Baggies tonight, he hasn’t ruled out resting some of his other players. And he’s promised to take the blame whenever it doesn’t pay off. “If we had the squad last year we would have done it last year,” said Klopp. “If we have the quality in the squad that we have we have to use it. “You cannot play the same 11 players all the time until four are injured and then you hope the other four who come in – who are quality but have no rhythm – will perform for you. That is not likely. “We did it in the last six or seven weeks. We do it like this. “Can they play better? Yes, but it’s an intense time. Ask everybody who played during the week, it’s intense what we’re doing, so that’s why we made changes.
"I’ve said it to the boys already, we can change as much as we want when we win the games, but when we don’t win the games I take the blame. I have no problem with that. “The boys who came in were fresh and did a brilliant job. You need to be ready for each challenge – and we were ready. “We tried everything (against Everton). We could have scored, we had clear chances, half-chances – we had everything you need but we didn’t use it. “I was really happy with the performance of the team. We thought we needed fresh legs – that’s what we had and we could have won it. We didn’t, so, as I said, blame me.” One of those changes saw left-back Andrew Robertson come in for the injured Alberto Moreno. Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana has returned to full training, but he will not be in contention to play, while centre-back Joel Matip is also unavailable.
Despite their disappointing draw with rivals Everton, Liverpool are enjoying a purple patch of form. They’re unbeaten in 10 games in all competitions, scoring 33 goals in those matches. In fact, they’ve only lost two league games all season, both of which were heavy defeats to Manchester City and Tottenham.
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