Leicester 3-1 Liverpool: Jürgen Klopp's reaction
Jürgen Klopp has provided his assessment of the factors that led to Liverpool suffering a 3-1 defeat against Leicester City on Saturday.
The Reds led 1-0 through Mohamed Salah’s 23rd goal of the season midway through the second half of the Premier League clash at King Power Stadium.
However, the hosts struck three times in seven minutes to secure the victory, with James Maddison’s free-kick finding the target before Alisson Becker and Ozan Kabak collided, allowing Jamie Vardy to roll in the second.
Harvey Barnes then completed the scoring with a low finish soon after.
Read on for a summary of what Klopp told reporters during his post-match press conference…
On Liverpool’s performance…
The majority of the game, I agree completely was a really good game. I don’t think it’s easy to dominate Leicester in the way we dominated them today, [to] play the kind of football we played today after losing a few days ago a game with a kind of strange scoreline. But the boys did that. We scored our first goal – the only goal actually – a great goal, concede a strange one; I think it’s offside, to be honest. And the 2-1 is a misunderstanding. Then the 2-1 had too big an impact on the game because I think there was still around about 12 or 13 minutes to go, with extra time longer, then we have to show a different reaction. But the third we then gave easy, simple away and then game over.
On whether the Reds need to use all their experience to start fighting back after recent results and close the gap to the top of the table…
I don’t think we can close that gap this year, to be honest. We have to win football games and big parts of our football was today again really, really good. We have to do it consistently. We have to avoid mistakes, we have to avoid misunderstandings. We cannot avoid mistakes of VAR or stuff like this, but all the rest that is in our hands we have to avoid. Today, in two situations we didn’t do that and that’s why they could score two goals. The rest of the football game is really good. Yes, if you win football games maybe you could score today more goals, but that’s the steps you have to make. First, you have to perform again; the result is always massively related to the performance. And we were today good enough to win the game for a long, long period in the game, but not until the end because of a couple of things.
The misunderstanding we had – before the game, we all knew Ozan is a really good player. And after the game we know that as well. But what we knew before the game, he is not really used to all the things we usually do. When you play with Ali then you know he is quite offensive-minded and comes out of his goal. In this situation it was a misunderstanding, that can happen when you are new together. Usually these things happen in pre-season, we don’t have that. So that’s why it happened. That was the second goal. The first goal is a strange situation which I think should have been, how I said, offside. We are not worrying or whatever about the title, we are not silly. We have on Tuesday a tough game and then on Saturday again, a derby, so these are the things we are thinking about. We want to have still a good season in the end, we have to win.
On whether he is ‘conceding the title’…
Yes, I can’t believe [the question], but yes.
On hard work being the only answer…
Look, we are not going for excuses, we are not looking for excuses. A lot of things happened and stuff like this, that’s all fine. In some moments we could – and should – have done better and in some it was just what happened and all these kinds of things. We spoke about that already. In the moment it’s tough, it’s tough, and I know the only way out of the situation is to play good football, to fight, to work hard on these kinds of things. We are still able to do that and we will keep doing that, we have to do that. Then we will get the results and we will see where we end up. The situation is not easy, that’s clear, but it’s our situation and how it always is with your own situation, you have to sort it yourself and that’s what we will do.
On whether the players ‘didn’t react well’ to Maddison’s goal being allowed to stand after a VAR check…
Yes, it’s reading too much into it. If you saw the situation back, everybody on the pitch, next to the pitch – even after watching the situation back – I was sure it was offside. Accepting something like this with a smile and saying, ‘Oh yes, OK, might have been a mistake’ is not easy. In our situation, for sure not. We had worked hard to be 1-0 up and then it’s gone with a really tough decision, especially for Ali a tough decision because he had three players in front of him and was 100 per cent sure it was offside. No, it’s not a problem [the reaction]; as I said, the 2-1 had nothing to do with it, the 2-1 can happen, but when we conceded the 2-1 and the manner we conceded it in, that was a knock. The reaction for that I didn’t like. The reaction after the equaliser… I don’t even know exactly because it was too quick and we conceded a second one. That was only just a long ball kicking up front and we made it dangerous ourselves.
On whether he’s ever known a game to turn in the manner today’s did…
It doesn’t happen a lot, but it can happen. We had it the other way around as well; you can change a game in that situation. As I said, the two goals we conceded obviously had a massive impact and for human beings that’s normal, but for us we don’t accept that – we have to react differently. When you concede that goal and then the next situation is an easy one… With the first goal Leicester scored, obviously they had like a mood lift because until then Leicester were not in the game, really – they couldn’t play their game for a second. But then they get this present and then we make another present and they are 2-1 up and then the third one. That’s what I don’t like. No, it doesn’t happen a lot, so I didn’t experience it a lot, but it can happen and has happened before.