Jurgen Klopp is confident that he can inspire his Liverpool charges to get back on track in the hunt for the Premier League title when the Reds face West Ham at Anfield on Sunday.
The Merseyside giants took a tumble in the top flight race last week when they collapsed after leading 2-0 and 3-1 at Bournemouth to lose out agonisingly to the Cherries in a 4-3 defeat.
And with Klopp redoubling his encouragement of his players to search out a victory, it could spell bad news for a beleaguered Hammers side, walloped 5-1 at home last time out by Arsenal.
Klopp took some members of his squad to watch Barcelona beat Borussia Monchengladbach in a Champions League game midweek and the German coach says it was a useful exercise in team bonding.
He said:
“When you do something like this then it is the best thing to do after you’ve lost a game, because after you’ve won a game everybody wants to be together, after you’ve lost everybody wants to go home usually and be alone.”
“So this was good for us to stay together and have a good time. Of course you can imagine Barcelona is a nice place, we could train there, the sun was shining, it felt pretty warm, we could see the match.”
“Especially the players who are often away in international games, they don’t have a lot of time off so they had few nice hours in Barcelona and I was really happy for them.”
“It was good, perfectly organised, so Wednesday we came back and could train immediately and we’re already settled again.”
Meanwhile, League Two Newport County or Plymouth Argyle will travel to Anfield to face Liverpool in the FA Cup third round once they settle their tie.