Jurgen Klopp insists that Liverpool expect to be back to challenging for major honours next season as their disappointing campaign draws closer to an end.
Principal owner John W Henry was spotted watching the 2-1 victory over West Ham on Wednesday evening, and Klopp confirmed they had met but kept coy when he was asked what they had discussed.
"I have, night before the game, yeah we're good. I'm not sure the drug is invented that you would have to give me to do that [reveal what was said].
The German confirmed that Stefan Bajcetic, Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott will be a part of his midfield rebuild, but stressed that new signings will also be a vital element.
"We have a lot of potential in this team, and we will keep that, use that, improve that and bring new players in.
I am really pleased with Harvey played big parts of the season, for big spells was our most consistent player and Curtis shows up now, Stefan was a real revelation, he is really good.
Other players played good football, as well, not all of them are too old or stuff like that, you need experience in a team as well.
We will be improved after pre-season, this year will help us after all the other intense years, this one was intense as well, but at least we didn't play as much football, that is something we want to use.
We want to go back to big finals, big occasions, all these kind of things, we have to work hard and a lot and we need the right players, and that is what we will have as well."
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Social media managers
The Reds manager urged fans to keep calm, to back the team and trust the club's recruitment plans, insisting that he understands their frustrations whilst also calling out criticism of the starting line-up on social media before kick-off on Wednesday.
"It is good that we make the decisions and we don't let the people who write on social media make them.
If you go to social media and look there and they think 'oh my god, there is no bigger problem in the world than our midfield'.
Somebody showed me after the game, the thing on Instagram or whatever, when people get aware of our line-up, what they write about.
Not a lot of them wanted Curtis on the pitch, not a lot of them wanted Cody on the pitch, when they saw that Joel Matip was playing, everybody was like, game over, I will watch the other game, stuff like this.
They are people who like us usually, it is just, I understand this season makes people nervous, I understand that we were not ourselves in big parts of the season but we still have to make good decisions, not panic decisions.
That is why I said whatever we do in the summer it will be not enough for the people in the first place, but that is the job, we have to make decisions, of the things we know, and that is exactly what we will do."
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Not taking Tottenham lightly
The German was asked about Tottenham's 6-1 defeat to Newcastle in their last away match, and he insisted that it would have absolutely no bearing on how he sets up his team for the clash.
"Newcastle I came home, I switched the television on, was 1-0, had something else to do, wanted to watch the game later, I honestly thought something was wrong on the screen.
Someone had made a joke or something like that, these kinds of things can happen.
You can never, I never could, think like that, to find for yourself the right attitude for the game, you have to think the opponent is extremely strong and they are strong.
A very famous German coach said once 'if you always expect an easy game you will never have one, if you always expect a super difficult game, from time-to-time, you might have an easy one.'
The other way round doesn't work. I see Harry Kane, I see Heung-Min Son, Kulusevski, Perisic, Richarlison, Hojbjerg and so on. They played exceptional football in their career.
We realised this year that we had some problems in moments and maybe other teams thought 'that is a great moment to meet Liverpool' and maybe it was, I don't know.
But if I was in the other camp I would never have imagined that Liverpool would show up weak and I cannot think about Tottenham in any other way that I expect them to be really strong.
You give them one ball, and it could be the wrong one and they go up in front of your goal, Harry Kane can score from everywhere, in a really difficult game last night, the big chance he prepared for Son, it is exceptional.
You have not a good game but still this quality, that is the real threat, they have real quality and we have to make sure they cannot show it, in the best Tottenham moments or in the lesser good moments, I respect a lot the quality of their team."