Just four days after the Dutchman's arrival from Southampton was secured, the Reds faced their local rivals in an FA Cup third-round clash at Anfield.
Klopp admits he was initially wary about the idea of throwing Van Dijk straight into the cauldron of a Merseyside derby, but changed his mind in the hours before kick-off.
The boss was subsequently rewarded with an 84th-minute winner from his January signing, an outcome he described with no small degree of understatement as 'not too bad'.
"It was not a tough decision, it was only a spontaneous decision," he said during an interview for the club's official 2017-18 end-of-season DVD.