Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson insists Sadio Mane’s touchline tirade at Burnley showed his side’s desire to win the Premier League. Mane launched into a furious rant after being substituted during Liverpool’s 3-0 win on Saturday.
The Senegal winger was apparently annoyed by Mohamed Salah’s failure to pass to him moments earlier. Mane brushed past Reds boss Jurgen Klopp and had to be consoled by team-mates Henderson, James Milner and Roberto Firmino on the bench.
Klopp claimed everything had been smoothed over after the latest incident of Salah opting to shoot instead of passing to a better-placed colleague.
Henderson, however, said he was pleased to see the rant from the usually mild-mannered Mane because it underlined the passion in the Liverpool team. “I’ve seen it now and again (from him). Sadio is fine, he’s a great lad,” Henderson said.
“That’s just us pushing each other all the time. I think that’s important. We all want to do better, we all want to improve, but we’re really close and I think we can deal with that.
“I’m not sure (what set him off) to be honest. I couldn’t really understand at first but then when he came in, he was laughing and joking. The most important thing was we got the result, Sadio knows that. He performed really well again.”
“We want to push each other. We want to improve all the time, I quite like that now and again. I think we need it.”
For the first time in their history Liverpool have won their first four league matches in successive seasons. After narrowly being pipped to the title by Manchester City last season, Liverpool are in good shape heading into the international break.
But Henderson insisted the standards they are setting were not considered by the players to be sending a ‘catch us if you can’ message to their rivals.
“We’re not setting them for anyone else, we’re setting them for ourselves. That’s what we want to do,” he added.
“We want to win every week, we want to perform every week and that’s difficult because there are so many good sides in the Premier League and in Europe. It’s really hard. Again for us, it’s game by game. We come up against different tests each week and it’s about giving everything every time we go onto the football pitch and we will see where we are at the end of the season.
“For me it’s just about concentrating on what we need to do. We have been very mature in our performances, especially away from home. We want to continue that form, keep doing the right things, keep working hard as a team. If we do that, we can put on performances like that.”