Jürgen Klopp has explained that his rotation policy is borne out of a desire to prevent members of Liverpool’s squad from playing three times a week where possible.

The boss has made several changes to his starting line-up for each of the Reds’ games in recent weeks as he bids to keep his players fresh amid the season’s most hectic period.

Ahead of Sunday’s trip to AFC Bournemouth, Klopp was asked whether he is still searching for the correct balance between making alterations to his team and ensuring the side he picks is strong enough to win following successive home draws with Everton and West Bromwich Albion.

“We have to make sure that we have as fit as possible players for the specific game, that’s all,” he replied.

“That’s what we did all the time, nothing else. We thought and still think that the squad gives us that opportunity and that’s why we did it, that’s pretty much all, nothing else. I can really understand, that’s normal after two draws at home, that there’s criticism out there, that’s completely normal, but I think they were two completely different games.

“The Everton game was a really good game of us, we played really well, one of the best derbies I saw since I came in [but] with the wrong result at the end so we were unlucky. To be honest, against West Brom I thought we didn’t deserve luck, really. It was not a good performance, it was not as good as we could’ve played, 100 per cent - not fluent enough, timing was not good, passing not at its best and that’s it. So yeah, it was not a good game.”

However, the manager does not feel Liverpool’s below-par display against the Baggies was down to rotation per se.

Klopp continued: “We didn’t have a lot of not good games in the last few weeks so I cannot make this one bigger than all of the others but I don’t think it had anything to do with rotation or something like that.

“In this moment all the players, even the players I rotate, they have two games a week and we make sure that they don’t have to play all the time three times a week, that’s all.

“Because I’m sure - by the way, nobody is doing it - that in our specific case, we had a very important game against Moscow and we couldn’t think of anything. We had the line-ups of all the other teams that play Champions League and I think they were already through the group stage so they made a lot of changes [but] we couldn’t do that, so we had to think.

“It’s not about respecting the one team more or less, we respect them all at 100 per cent, so it’s not about them, it’s all about us and that was the reason.”