It was only their second defeat of the season in all competitions for the Reds as Ademola Lookman’s 59th-minute strike separated the sides.
Follow Us
Jurgen Klopp was understandably not happy with the 1-0 defeat against Leicester City in the Premier League. Starting with the performance shown by his players and the decision making at times on the night were some of the things that did not please the Liverpool manager. He rued a night when Liverpool were “just not really ourselves.” It was only their second defeat of the season in all competitions for the Reds as Ademola Lookman’s 59th-minute strike separated the sides. This comes after a first-half Mohamed Salah penalty was saved by Kasper Schmeichel and the Egyptian’s rebound hit the crossbar. Klopp’s Reds still remain in second place in the table but now they trail the Premier League leaders Manchester City by six points at the halfway point.
“We were just not really ourselves tonight. So, we started OK, I can’t say differently, like what I said to all your colleagues outside. I think we started OK. I didn’t like 100 per cent the intensity even in the beginning, but sometimes you have starts like this. But then we lost rhythm and never found it really back. At least we had moments where we could have played much better,” he said during a post-match press conference.
“They played a diamond tonight, at least for a while first half and there is no system in the world which is perfect, that means you can use these kinds of things. And especially in the diamond, if you fix the last line you can play left and right and shoot left and right of the six, that makes it really tricky. That’s quite a challenge for protection because they had Maddison on 10 and Iheanacho and Vardy up front, so it doesn’t feel comfortable but you can play that.”
Klopp then went into the details explaining certain decision-making choices by his players but conceded that Leicester “deserved” the three points. “For these situations, you cannot and should not take always the obvious thing – when you have the ball free and you can cross and players are in the box, these kinds of things. We forced it a little bit too early, we crossed too early the balls in the first half instead of passing the extra pass. If you do that, all of a sudden the situation looks completely different. We tried to change that at half-time but for some reason, it didn’t click tonight really,” he added.
“They scored the goal, it was clear we were under pressure, a great atmosphere. We were pushing then but didn’t use the chances, missed three headers, all these kinds of things. In the end, what I told everybody who was responsible for the Leicester performance tonight: well deserved. The story is actually nice – one of the guys who was constantly talking about we should not play the 26th and 28th plays only on the 28th and is losing against the team who plays on the 26th and 28th. Funny story, I know. So I really think in a really strange game from our side, they deserved the three points.
