Jurgen Klopp has counted his losses after watching his team fall 3-2 to Swansea City in Saturday’s EPL match at Anfield.
Fernando Llorent scored a brace for the Swans and Gylfi Sigurdsson made it three in the last few minutes, leaving Klopp’s men with no time for an equalizer.
Roberto Firmino netted twice for the Reds but his efforts weren’t enough to secure victory for a team of eleven talented players who regrettably accepted their first home defeat in over a year.
The hosts were caught napping in their own stadium where thousands of emotional fans watched, screamed, cried and prayed.
The former Borussia Dortmund coach, Klopp, held a post-match conference where a lot of issues were discussed.
Here’s a transcript from the interview as published on the club’s website (www.liverpoolfc.com):
Jurgen Klopp’s Assessment Of The Game:
[In the] first half, obviously you could hear in the stadium it was not the most entertaining game. It was the job to do today. If you want to have a real spectacle on the pitch, you need two sides for it.
In the first half, only we played, they defended. It’s not that you can create in each second a chance, but we had these four or five really good moments when we did really well. That’s what you have to do in a game like this, to change the situation in a positive way, [which] means you have a lead, 1-0 up, 2-0 up, whatever. That changes the game, of course.
In this case, we couldn’t score and came out of half-time and then obviously you need to be spot on immediately and in the first minutes one of the decisive [moments] was that they even got the corner.
It was a throw-in and we were too late, then not concentrated in the situation, flick-on and corner. We lost the first challenge after the corner and, until now, I couldn’t see how Llorente – who was the goalscorer – could be completely alone in the six-yard box and score the goal.
Obviously it had an influence on us and them. Then they had their second chance in the game, we couldn’t avoid the cross, ball in the air – brilliant cross, brilliant header.
That, I can easily accept. If something happens like this, I don’t speak about the mistakes around the header. But we should have avoided the pass and then the cross. That should be possible.
The reaction was then very good; 2-1, wonderful goal, 2-2, wonderful goal, big chances, chance after chance. Then we had the punch that we missed a little bit in the first half, not only when we scored the goals, also when we created the chances.
Then the most disappointing moment, the third goal, nearly everything was wrong around this goal. I think it started with a long ball – that was not a real surprise, they played a few of these. The reaction on the long ball was not good. We strode back, we were there and we scored, then we obviously couldn’t switch in this moment to a defensive mood. That was the biggest mistake in this situation. We were passive. We win the ball and we could again create the next chance, but they took the opportunity and at the end Swansea players were in our box. That makes, of course, no sense.
I don’t look for where is lucky and unlucky; it was obvious we had not that much luck today, maybe they had a little bit more, especially in defending.
[There were] two or three situations where it was already done nearly and we could have scored again.
We showed again that when we are really on track then we are a strong side and can create chances and score goals. That’s natural, if you want, and will happen. But the defending around all three goals was not good enough, 100 per cent. That’s a very important part of the game. It’s very disappointing today.
Klopp said Swansea merited their three points, but hopes his team can learn from the mistakes as they face Southampton on Wednesday.
“…Today was Swansea and we gave them the opportunity to win the game and so they are deserved winners,” the 49-year-old said. “… It is our mistake – nobody else made a mistake, only us. Now we have to show a reaction.”
