Klopp’s side never recovered from the second-minute goal by Sam Vokes and, when Andre Gray doubled the hosts’ advantage just before half-time, the visitors’ job was made even more hard as the Clarets put men behind the ball and conceded territory. To prove it, he started James Milner in the back, only swapping him with the Spaniard in the second half.
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“I’ve said a number of times that I don’t have any interest in criticizing players”, stressed the German manager, unwilling to lay the blame on just one player. In my opinion, we could have avoided this situation and yes Alberto could have done better, that’s right. “If you tell me a year ago we could have played at Burnley like this, not flawless of course, I would be really surprised”, he said.
“Possession has to lead to something and I don’t think they opened us up too many times”.
The home side went ahead inside the first minute through Sam Vokes, who turned his marker before rifling the ball past Simon Mignolet from the edge of the box.
“The season is still pretty young”, said afterwards to Match of the Day.
On the improvements the Reds have made under Klopp, Dyche added: “From what he said he wanted to do when he came in it’s now starting to look more obvious”.
“We know we’re not going to out-play teams every week but we have the biggest heart”. But it’s not a defending problem, it’s an offensive problem. “We can say that they scored two and we could have scored five”. I knew it before.
We lacked steel in midfield at Turf Moor, and lost 50/50s that we’d hope Can would have fared better in. It’s not allowed that you suffer under your own ball possession, that makes no sense. We should be ready in our development and these mistakes shouldn’t happen anymore, but our training drills did not include us playing the ball at the wrong time to the opponent.
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Speaking after the game, the boss was reluctant to place the blame on his defensive unit for the concession of two goals, instead preferring to highlight the fact that possession was surrendered cheaply on in both situations. He’s an experienced player and I don’t want to force a new position on a player.vI want players to be convinced by themselves.
