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Jürgen Klopp offered a frank assessment after Liverpool were beaten 1-0 by Burnley at Anfield on Thursday night.
The Reds suffered a first loss at home in the Premier League since April 2017 when Ashley Barnes swept a late penalty to secure the Clarets’ victory.
Klopp subsequently responded to questions from reporters during his post-match press conference. Read on for a summary of what the manager said …
On whether he feels that luck is not quite with Liverpool at the moment …
No, it is not the luckiest period of our lives, certainly not. But I think it would be a bit cheap to put everything into it; that we are not lucky enough or at a specific time. I think our problem is decision making in the moment and decisions are based on the information I give obviously and the state of mind that you are in, so how confident are you doing it in really small spaces and things like that. That’s why I said what I said. That is why we are not scoring at the moment. It’s not good to mention it now, but we won games with lower possession against Burnley, with fewer chances against Burnley and we won them. Tonight we did not win because we did not score in the situations. When I look at the game now and when I think about it, in all the interviews I had enough time to think about it a little, how is it possible that you lose that game? But we lost it. That’s our fault, and that means my fault.
On your side being able to run together …
Look how silly it would be if I sat here now, losing to Burnley, I didn’t score in the last three or four games, I don’t know exactly, and now I’m talking about the title race. How silly would that be? It’s just that we have to win soccer games, it was always like that. For this we have to score goals, there is no doubt about that. That is what we have to change and we have to do better. If things don’t work out, you have to work harder, do the right things more often, longer, and more consistently, all these kinds of things. But don’t talk like it’s an easy situation, it’s not. It shows many things. It’s amazing how consistent the guys were, but that was never something anyone should have taken for granted because now we see that they are all human beings, that’s how it is. And now I have to make it clear what we have to do at the right times and then we will score goals again.
By regaining ‘faith in’ his players …
It is the job that a manager or coach should do. I’m not the first to have that situation and I won’t be the last, but it doesn’t help if I tell you now what I’m going to say to the boys and things like that. Anyway, about this specific game, I have to think about it first because after the game I only did interviews. It’s not rocket science yet, but it didn’t work again tonight. It’s not the first game, it didn’t work for two, three, four games or whatever. That’s what we take. It’s not about the acting, it’s defining moments. We have to improve again at the decisive moments, we have to go back to being ourselves at the decisive moments. Not in the preparation, everything is fine, and in how we do things differently, but in the last third, at the last moment, the decision making is in the moment not as it should be. Now everyone is going to talk about it, it’s not right, that doesn’t make the problem less, it makes it quite a bit bigger and we still have to change it. That is what we will do.
On the confidence of the players …
We can do more with this group, we can play much better football, that’s my concern. That’s what I’m thinking about. Confidence is not at the highest level, I think it’s so obvious that I don’t have to mention it, you can see it at specific times. It’s like 90 percent of everything the guys did all along is still there, but the decisive 10 percent is missing right now. So now we have to work on this decisive 10 percent. That’s right: we always work on them, but now we have to dig a little deeper to get them back.
On decision-making in the last third of the field …
They have the correct information, they get the correct information, but when I say that it is my fault maybe I was not convincing enough, I could not give enough confidence, that is my job too. I can’t say we’re not confident enough and then say, ‘I don’t know why that happened. This is how I understand work. It’s about crossing at the right time, passing at the right time and all that sort of thing. Not that we gave the wrong information, but you must be in a good mood to use it. You have to be brave between the lines, you have to turn between the lines, you have to pass the ball, you have to get it between the lines and then you go behind the line and then the winger comes. from the outside, he’s there and he’s crossing the ball. Again, it’s not rocket science, but it obviously didn’t happen tonight and I think, how do I understand it myself, and that’s the only thing that is important to me in this case, which is my fault.
