Jurgen Klopp has heavily criticised Liverpool’s performance – and particularly their defending – in Saturday’s heavy 4-1 defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.
The visitors opened the scoring somewhat against the run of play through Mohamed Salah but a wonderfully slick team move saw Julian Alvarez – starting in place of the injured Erling Haaland – level from close range.
City then ran away with the contest in the second half, with Kevin De Bruyne netting almost immediately after the restart before goals from Ilkay Gundogan and man-of-the-match Jack Grealish completed the rout.
Klopp cut a frustrated figure on the sidelines during the match and was very unhappy afterwards, criticising how open and unaggressive his side were out of possession and saying they were ‘lucky’ not to concede more than four goals.
Speaking to BT Sport after the match, Klopp said: ‘The key areas are clear. If you don’t control the double 6 you have a real problem if you don’t then control the double 10 – Gundogan, De Bruyne in between [the lines] – then it’s pretty much impossible to play because then the pitch becomes too big.
‘So we conceded the first goal from an open ball in midfield I think where we didn’t even have a challenge. Then the ball outside we are too deep and then the counterattack happens. Great play.
‘Then 2-1 directly after [half-time], then 3-1 where we have a massive overload on one side, should win the ball but don’t even have a challenge. So these types of things absolutely cannot happen, but they happened.
‘And after that we were just open, like “wow!” They could do whatever they wanted and we just had to follow. We were lucky that they weren’t in the most greedy mood, actually. They scored the fourth one but then they were happy obviously kind of as well.
‘Apart from that there’s nothing good to say about this game. This 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 absolutely not possible, but it happened. And now I stand here and I have to explain it but I cannot explain it, I just can describe it.’
Pep Guardiola, on the other hand, was delighted with what he saw, telling BBC Match of the Day: ‘From the first minute until the 93rd minute, it was almost the perfect performance. Even 0-1 down, we were playing well and Jack made a good save to stop a potential 0-2.
‘The way we played, the way we found our spaces for how they defend. Our intensity, high pressing. We were so stable and stuck to the plan. All the players were magnificent.
‘Always we have fought against Liverpool, the way they defend, the way they play is so difficult for us. But today the players were magnificent. We played really well in all departments so hats off to our players. Tell me one player who didn’t play well? There was no one who was not playing well.’
MORE : Man City manager Pep Guardiola explains Erling Haaland absence against Liverpool
MORE : Jurgen Klopp must move Trent Alexander-Arnold into midfield, believes Jamie Carragher
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