Liverpool suffered their first league defeat of the season to newly promoted side Burnley at Turf Moor on Saturday.
Advertisement
Jurgen Klopp has demanded more from Liverpool in the final third as they embark on their League Cup journey against Burton Albion on Tuesday.
Liverpool went on the backfoot early on as a mistake at the back from Nathaniel Clyne, led to Sam Vokes opening the scoring for Burnley in the second minute of the game.
“How can I be happy with this?” he said. “Burnley deserved to win with a very passionate performance”. Then, Steven Defour, on his Burnley debut, sprung away and played in Gray to give them a 2-0 advantage.
“The first half was not good for our self-confidence”.
Burnley boss Sean Dyche made no excuses for his tactics after Vokes and Gray scored their maiden Premier League goals. I want to penetrate, create and take chances.
“Are we talking about Alberto Moreno because he did not defend so good in the game against Arsenal?”.
Liverpool had over 80 per-cent possession and had eight times as many shots as their opponents, yet for all the creative quality they had on the pitch could not penetrate a resilient defence. In England you use the word “clinical” – in a lot of situations I saw we were clinical but even then we didn’t score. “I have fond memories of that but it was a long time ago”, he said.
This game also showed that possession means little, and teams can emerge victorious regardless of how much of the ball they had. We have a lot of options and you can say ‘take another one, ‘ that’s possible but only if it really is the guy we want. “But our timing and decision making really was not good”. But it’s our job to get the result which we deserve. For others it’s just like “park that, let’s move on and get another one in”.
Advertisement
Whether it’s buying the wrong players; failing to sign enough players; picking the wrong team or simply losing a football match; the first false step causes the game’s legion of the entitled to yell “sell” and “buy” with equal levels of indignation. “Sometimes you have the kind of games that it doesn’t work, and you have to keep your confidence and look forward”.
