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Jurgen Klopp praised the concentration levels of his players as Liverpool strengthened their top-four challenge by laying to rest their Tony Pulis bogey.

Roberto Firmino scored the only goal in first-half injury time as the Reds earned a hard-fought 1-0 win at West Bromwich Albion.

Remarkably, it was the first time the Reds had won a Premier League game at a team managed by Pulis, the Baggies boss having earned three wins and five draws while in charge at The Hawthorns and previous Stoke City and Crystal Palace.

And a relieved Klopp said: “I can understand why. I actually thought we'd won here last year, but it was a draw. I'm not too good at remembering results!

“I had no idea it has been that long since Liverpool have won (against a Tony Pulis side), but I can imagine it's a difficult place.

“There were only three points available today, we had 63 before we came here and now we have 66.

“That's a wonderful number for one week and then we want to have 69 points.

“It's really three very important points at a difficult place.

“It improves our base for the rest of the season. I'm happy about this, let's carry on.”

The win moved Liverpool back up to third with only five games remaining, and was forged on a strong defensive display with only a second clean sheet in 14 Premier League games.

The Reds had to withstand a late barrage from the Baggies with Simon Mignolet making an impressive stop from Matty Phillips.

And mindful of the late slip that cost two points against Bournemouth earlier this month, Klopp was delighted by the manner of Liverpool's win.

“You need to be on the highest concentration level, and we were,” he said.

“In the first half we didn't play good football but in the second half we did much better. We kept the ball in the first half and didn't let them be really part of the game. We did that much better in the second half after the goal.

“It was very, very important for us because showing this concentration level until the end didn't work each week in the last few months. But today it was really good.”

Klopp added: “It was a huge win. It's one of the most difficult places to go because in no game can you feel comfortable at one moment.

“Somebody asked me which result would have kept me calm today, and I said only if it was 4-0 after 86 minutes, only then would I have thought it was done.

“With West Brom it's not only about set-pieces. They have really good footballers on the pitch, and if you are a little bit less aggressive then they use their threat around set-pieces to play football.

“You don't want to go in and make challenges, so you step back and let them run and that makes it really difficult.

“You can always do better, and we learned during the game. I liked it a lot that the second half looked better tuned than the first half.

“We knew what to do but in the first half we looked a bit static in moments, the second half was much better. I'm really happy with the performance.”