Jurgen Klopp bemoaned Liverpool’s “passive” performance as they were beaten 4-1 by title defenders Manchester City and said his side were fortunate not to concede more goals.
Things started brightly for Liverpool, who took an early lead through Mohamed Salah at the Etihad Stadium but Julian Alvarez’s goal pegged late in the first half pegged them back nd City were rampant after the break, as the visitors fell apart.
Kevin De Bruyne scored inside a minute of the restart and further goals from an inform Jack Grealish and Ilkay Gundogan sealed an emphatic win for Pep Guardiola’s side who are chasing Arsenal for the title, with the Reds, on the other hand, facing an uphill battle to secure a top-four finish after an alarming fall from grace this season
“City had more possession but that always happens when we play here and we scored a wonderful goal, could have scored a second one in a really good counter-attack.
“You come out of half-time, a ball in midfield, not even a challenge, we are too deep. If you are too deep, too passive, they use that so that is 2-1.
“Then 3-1 super quick, after we have three or four one-on-one situations and we don’t make a challenge and you saw what happened, we were not there, anyone, too passive, too open, too deep, too far away from anything.
“Four performances were okay, the two midfielders, Hendo [Jordan Henderson] and Fab [Fabinho], worked a lot, Cody [Gakpo] and Ali [Alisson] and that is very difficult.
“If you want to get something here, 14 or 15 players have to be on top of their game and that was not the case.
“We had a situation for 3-2 when Robbo broke through but apart from that City could do what they wanted because the spaces were too big so we were lucky they only scored one more.”
Speaking in his post-match interview with BT Sport, Klopp added: “There is nothing good to say about this game.
“It’s a game we have to use, unfortunately, to make clear which things cannot happen. We cannot not have challenges in key areas. We cannot be that kind of open. It’s not possible. But it happened.
“I have to explain it but I can’t. I can only describe it.”
As quoted in Jurgen Klopp press conference transcript on Liverpool’s official website
.
