Jurgen Klopp pleased with Liverpool's patience in Sunderland win

Jurgen Klopp praised his players' patience after Liverpool won 1-0 away to struggling Sunderland in their final Premier League outing of the year on Wednesday.Klopp's men edged a hard-fought encounter at the Stadium of Light to move up to seventh in the table, with Christian Benteke scoring the only goal 22 seconds into the second half.

Chances had been scarce in the opening period, with Roberto Firmino having a shot from distance touched on to a post by Sunderland goalkeeper Vito Mannone and Sunderland defending in numbers.
But the visiting side were too quick out of the blocks after the interval, with Benteke -- who had also claimed the winner against Leicester City on Boxing Day -- collecting Adam Lallana's flick from Nathaniel Clyne's pass to find the bottom corner and draw praise from their manager.
Klopp told the post-match news conference: "It's better if you decide the game early, but we are not in wonderland. We had to wait for the special moment and work for it, and that's what we did.
"We took the right information from the first half to try to do better in the second half. We started with better pressing in different situations.

Jurgen Klopp says 30 points feel a lot better than 27 for his victorious side.

"It's always the biggest challenge in a game where the first thing to do is fight for second balls, to find the right moment for creative football and in defence for pressing. That's not too easy.
"In the first half, obviously we had a lot of possession, no real chance or opportunity for Sunderland. They had some set-plays and one counter-attack, I think, but it was a big challenge for us."
Benteke, Philippe Coutinho, Emre Can and substitute Jordon Ibe all missed late chances to make the game safe, but Klopp was content with a second 1-0 victory in a row following his team's victory over Leicester. He would be happy to continue the sequence away to West Ham United on Saturday and continue to make up ground in the Premier League table after victory over the Black Cats took Liverpool up to seventh, level on points with sixth-placed Manchester United.
"After half-time we forced this goal and could have scored the second one and the decision would have been made, but we didn't," said Klopp. "So we had to stay concentrated until the end. We were and it was a deserved win.

"We will be celebrating now from here the whole way until the plane, then we will fly home, go to bed and prepare ourselves for West Ham. Thirty points feels much better than 27 -- more than three points better, to be honest. You can see how close it is -- the 'best teams' in the league after 19 games have six points more than we have."
Klopp said it was too early to offer a prognosis on his captain Jordan Henderson, who was replaced by Lucas Leiva after an hour as a precaution.
"I don't really know -- it's not perfect otherwise we wouldn't have taken him off, but we had to," Klopp said. "Now we have to wait. I cannot say exactly [what the injury is] at this moment.
"All the players are important but with Emre [Can] and Hendo together [in midfield], it's a good couple usually. I cannot say too much about the problems he had now, I hope it's not too serious."
Lallana admitted his part in setting up Benteke had a whiff of good fortune about it, but said it was a case of hard work paying off for the visitors.
"I don't think I meant it to go directly into Christian's path, but sometimes you need the rub of the green, especially when you come to a tough place like this as they're scrapping for every point," Lallana told Liverpool's club website.
"It could have been two or three in the end -- on the counter we had a couple of chances -- but it's a great result for us and hopefully we can push on and get another win on Saturday.
"The manager has tried to drum it into us that sometimes we've got to fight a bit more, play teams at their own game, and coming here is difficult, so we're delighted to get three points."