Jürgen Klopp has a simple solution in his attempt to turn Liverpool into title contenders: footballing Yakult. The Anfield manager, having begun his first full season at the club, is hoping that the key to future development is a stronger collective gut.

Liverpool travel to Burnleyon Saturday after last weekend’s exhilarating, if not entirely flawless, 4-3 victory over Arsenal. Having endured a difficult first half, Liverpool came back in the second 45 minutes to blaze into a 4-1 lead, only then to concede two more goals before full-time. Despite the attacking bent of his side, Klopp believes conceding goals need not be inevitable once the squad instinctively know their responsibilities on the pitch.

“We didn’t think before the game that it was a very offensive lineup”, Klopp said of his selection at Arsenal. “It is but only if the players just think offensively. They all have a job to do in defence too. In the end I was not too happy with our defending in the first half but the chances Arsenal had were when we lost the ball.”

The German went on to explain what he saw as the reasons Liverpool conceded the opening goal in the match, scored by Theo Walcott. “Arsenal played good counter-pressing. They gave Adam Lallana no real chance to keep the ball and [Francis] Coquelin made a good tackle and a very good pass. We had four players there but we didn’t orientate, so we didn’t know who is where and who has which job to do. We need [Lallana] to jump out and make the offensive transition but then we have to fill up the spaces with the guys that are still there.”

For Klopp, these kind of insights come largely from post-match analysis but can be learned only through repetition on the training field. “It’s a process of course,” he said. “We had two hours’ training today on it but it doesn’t mean you know what to do when you’re under pressure in a game. What we need is for the decision to be made here [in the gut], not here [in the head] but we are in the head right now.

“We didn’t make the training intensive or anything,” Klopp went on, “We tried again to learn, with low intensity, how to play together, the passing movements we want to make, so that players can answer some questions: ‘When I am here, where are you? Can I trust that you are really there? Are you protecting me so that I can then go over there?’ All that stuff. Time together will help. So will experience together, success and good results. And at some point it will be here [in the gut] and then we can use it more easily.”

Lots will ride on whether the German is able to achieve his ambitions with his squad but he says it was possible to start the process properly only this summer, after their Europa League and Capital One Cup runs last season meant Liverpool played 63 games. “When you learn something you cannot start with every detail or you lose the overview before you even started,” Klopp said. “Last year we didn’t have a lot of time to analyse our games and by the time we did it was already the day before the next one. You were able to make little moves but not a real analysis. So we concentrated on a few things we tried to change. We tried to improve our physical ability.”

While Klopp’s brand of football is avowedly attacking, he bristles at the idea that it is cavalier. “I love clean sheets,” he said. “It looks different but I love it! I would never accept conceding goals before a game, to be honest. I’ve never chosen a line-up where I’ve thought, ‘OK, maybe we can score five but with these guys we will concede four.’ I never did this...

“It’s clear that we don’t pass for the sake of passing. We want to create offensive spaces. We want to move the opposition. But until we know ‘this is the pass’, we don’t have to take too much risk around the goal. You always have to take risks but not too much risk and so I was really pleased with this [in the game against Arsenal].”

“We know about the style of play,” Klopp went on. “Style of play sounds a bit too big. I mean that we know how we want to play but now we have to prove it. That’s what we feel. We have to show that we understand this and that we are prepared for this game. Take it, hopefully win it, then analyse it for the next game. It will be a different opponent and they will ask different questions maybe but we go again.”