'Let's show what we're about against Chelsea'
Neil Critchley has called on his Liverpool U23s side to move on from last week's defeat at Arsenal by showing their true potential against Chelsea in Premier League 2.
While the coach felt the 4-0 loss to the Gunners last Friday was a harsh scoreline, he accepted that defensively the team were below their usual level.
And he wants the young Reds to bounce back at the first opportunity when they face the Blues on Saturday afternoon.
The PL2 encounter will be shown live on LFCTV and LFCTV GO, with kick-off at 12pm BST and our build-up beginning 30 minutes earlier.
Ahead of the game, we got Critchley’s thoughts on the lessons his team can learn from last week and why he’s confident of a response.
On a frustrating night at Arsenal…
I don’t think the scoreline reflected the game but that’s the way it finished and that’s the reality of the game. After 20 minutes, before they scored, I don’t think anyone in the stadium would have said that it would end up being 4-0 to Arsenal. Even when they were 2-0 up I thought we showed a good response. We created some good chances and I felt if we had got it back to 2-1 then the momentum would have been with us. We could easily have got something out of it and in the end the game has ran away from us. It looked harsher than the actual performance but we’ve still got to learn lessons from it. We weren’t good enough in both boxes. We weren’t clinical in attack and we didn’t defend as a team at the other end. If you do that then you don’t give yourself much chance of winning any football match.
On learning an important lesson from the second goal they conceded by overplaying in their own penalty area…
We want to play and we want to try to play from the back. I think that’s a real strength of ours because it helps us control the game and it helps us to dominate possession. But they also have to know there is a time and a place to do that and you have to do the basics right. We didn’t do that at that moment and that was probably the most disappointing aspect of the whole performance, for me.
On aiming to bounce back away at Chelsea on the same day the first team play at Stamford Bridge…
We play earlier than the first team and it would be nice if both of us could get good results and pick up three points each on our travels. This will be a tough game as Chelsea have got some excellent players at U23 level but it’s important we show a response from the Arsenal game. There wasn’t a lot wrong with the performance and we’ve got to be careful that we don’t overanalyse and don’t go into too much of an inquest because it’s important we stick together and show belief in what we are doing. I believe in the long run that will be the right thing for the players.
Psychologically, it’s a tough challenge for us on Saturday but we’ve got to make sure that we give our players confidence. So far this season, and I know the game isn’t played on statistics, but if you look at our possession stats and shots on target we’ve been the dominant team in every single game we have played. That hasn’t transferred into results and that’s important because results are vital, and hopefully we can change that on Saturday against Chelsea. Scoring goals changes games. Friday night was a great example of that. Critical moments are going against us but some we need to eradicate ourselves and be better at.
On doing the double over Chelsea at U23 level last season, winning 3-1 away and 5-1 at Anfield…
They were two really good performances. We produced a really good away performance with some really good counter-attacking goals. The one at Anfield was arguably our best performance of the season and showed you everything you needed to know about this group. That’s why I am confident that on Saturday we will show what we are about as a group of people. We know we will have quite a few different players on the pitch but it’s a great game to look forward to and it’s one we can’t wait for so we can get the memory of last Friday night out of our minds.