Newcastle United star Georginio Wijnaldum has urged the side to maintain the fight they showed against Liverpool in the coming weeks, reports BBC Sport.
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Prior to the Newcastle defeat, Klopp had yet to taste defeat on the road and his team had scored 10 goals in their last two road trips.
Liverpool, for whom the defeat was just a second in 12 attempts under new manager Jurgen Klopp, were not at their clinical best with Christian Benteke and substitute Daniel Sturridge both guilty of bad misses, but the Magpies were good value for the points on a day when they restored a measure of pride.
That point came today against Newcastle, where a messy first half and a Martin Skrtel own goal in the second ultimately found the Reds on the losing end of a 2-0 match.
With five minutes of stoppage time signalled, Wijnaldum then eased nerves around St James’ Park, latching onto a superb ball from Papiss Cisse and clipping over Mignolet to seal a vital win.
Wijnaldum told nufcTV: “Of course it’s hard, criticism is always hard to get, but a lot of the criticism, to my mind, was right because we didn’t have good performances”.
Unfortunately for Newcastle, the win was not enough to move them out of the bottom three, but it did take them a step closer to doing so.
“Newcastle not only played long balls, they build-up play but we wasn’t there”.
Wijnaldum saw a 55th-minute shot deflected wide after good work by Sissoko and Jack Colback, but the visitors responded in kind with Ibe running at the home defence at will, and Klopp threw Adam Lallana and Sturridge into the mix when he replaced Benteke and Firmino with 28 minutes remaining. I don’t know why.
“We should play much more football, our pressing was not good”.
“We played no counter-pressing”.
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Newcastle’s improvement could hardly have been better timed with McClaren facing rumours that he had two games in which to save his job, although it is understood there is no appetite within the boardroom to dispense with the services of a man who has only been in the post for six months.
