Three warm-up matches, three clean-sheet wins. The team only managed two such results in the Bundesliga in the entire first half of the season. Jürgen Klopp should be feeling pretty happy, especially as his side put together a lot of good attacking moves in their 1-0 win in Utrecht on Wednesday. But the coach knows there's still plenty left to do.

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“We're on the right track,” he said after the Utrecht game, but added a note of caution: “To be brimming with satisfaction one and a half weeks before the season resumes would not be good. It's not like I'm having to suppress a grin. We still have work to do and I don't get the feeling we're where we want to be yet.”

He was full of praise for the attacking play between Reus and Kampl in the 1-0 victory (“The goal was fantastic”), and he also saw “lots of good moves but on the whole not enough to show for them.”

During the first half of the season the coach was more worried about the team's defence, which has been further weakened as a result of injuries to Sebastian Kehl and Sven Bender. In Utrecht the two more attacking defenders Ilkay Gündogan and Nuri Sahin played in more defensive roles for only the second time. “That could work if we succeed in keeping a compact formation. If we don't, if we go forward too soon we'll leave ourselves exposed at the back,” the coach explained.         

The deciding factor is not possession, but what you do with it. “If everyone is clearer about their roles, if everyone takes a step forward, if everyone operates from a compact formation then at the end of the day it doesn't matter who plays in this position,” said Klopp, who made a change for the second half, trying out Matthias Ginter in this role. “He played his best warm-up game yesterday. In a defensive role. He looked good.”

The coach thinks he'll be able to fill the gap left by Bender and Kehl without resorting to the transfer market. “They should both be back in the not too distant future. And we have strength in depth in our squad.”

The fact the team kept a clean sheet for their third midseason friendly of 2015 was mentioned only in passing by Klopp. “Three clean sheets are good. But it's not the Bundesliga. We're not getting ahead of ourselves.”