They were neither able to create enough chances in the final third nor did they manage to maintain a solid defensive shape.
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Liverpool suffered a surprise defeat away to Toulouse in the Europa League on Thursday night. The Reds were just a shadow of their usual self as they struggled to find any momentum during the game. They were neither able to create enough chances in the final third nor did they manage to maintain a solid defensive shape. In the end, Toulouse took advantage of those situations to register an important 3-2 win.
Jurgen Klopp was understandably not happy with Liverpool’s performance, as he looked back at the 3-2 defeat to Toulouse in the Europa League. “It was well deserved to lose because they won pretty much all the decisive challenges, battles. We have too many situations where we should have won the ball but we didn’t. On top of that we gave the ball away easily at least twice – one was a goal, the other I am not sure if it was an allowed goal or a disallowed goal,” Klopp, quoted by the club’s website, said during a post-match press conference.
He added: “Counter-attack, third goal, last line too deep. Defending-wise it was just not good enough. When you concede three goals then you need to score a lot of goals to still win it and obviously it nearly happened that we got a point here. That wouldn’t have made the game better, but it would have felt better in the table. But that’s it now, so we have to accept it. As I said, well deserved.”
There was controversy in the end when Jarell Quansah’s strike deep into injury time was ruled out by VAR for an apparent handball by Alexis Mac Allister in the build-up. On being asked about the handball decision, Klopp replied, “I only saw the video back now and for me it’s not a handball, but how can I decide that? The ball goes to the chest and then I don’t see a contact with the arm, to be honest.”
He added: “Maybe they had a different picture than I had. It was pretty long ago before we scored the goal and I thought, ‘Where is the free-kick?’ I didn’t see it properly but I heard there could have been a penalty for us in another situation, I don’t know. Actually, I am a bit more concerned about [the fact that] I would have loved us to have played better, to be honest. That’s my main issue tonight. In a football way more aggressive.”
Klopp was also not happy with the manner in which Liverpool conceded their goals. When asked whether he is concerned by the team’s performance, the manager said, “No, I am not concerned. In the end, we were intense – we threw everything in, but the problem is in a football game you have to make the decisive things in the right moment to do them right. We cannot concede the goals we conceded again. The first goal can happen, but then it happened in the second half [with] similar situations: we were completely open, last line too deep, counter-attack.”
He further added: “They scored five goals, two disallowed, and that is obviously then not good. Yes, the result is the opposite of good, but the performance was just not good enough. I am not concerned, I just see we have to change and we will, definitely. I just don’t want we accept it a little bit. I would have loved to have got the point – the performance could have been better but we have a point – but I would have said exactly the same. We have to be better in these moments, 100 per cent, and that’s it.”
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