Jurgen Klopp admits Liverpool forgot about defending in Man Utd loss
By Tom Gott
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has joked his side were so focused on ending their dry streak in front of goal that they forgot to focus on defending in Sunday's 3-2 loss to Manchester United in the FA Cup fourth round.
The Reds came into the game on a run of four consecutive Premier League games without a goal, with their only strikes of 2021 coming in the 4-1 win over Aston Villa's academy side in the FA Cup third round.
Those struggles ended on Sunday as Mohamed Salah finished off two excellent goals, but Liverpool failed to deal with United's threat at the other end of the pitch and ultimately fell to goals from Mason Greenwood, Marcus Rashford and Bruno Fernandes.
“There was a lot of good things and some mistakes around the goals. If you want to win here you have to be absolutely top and we were not,” Klopp said. (via The Telegraph). “For the first goal we had no protection - we wanted it too much. Things like this should not happen but they can happen. We had too many players in a receiving position.
“We can take things out of this game. It's good for Mo Salah, good for the confidence. It was a tough game. We want it hard but it was not enough.
"I saw the boys really, really wanted it. We had problems on the counter-attack, it was intense, but there were positives.
No second chances in knockout football. Gutted we didn’t get the job done. Have to look forward now, a job to do on Thursday #YNWA pic.twitter.com/RMiZur72E9
— James Milner (@JamesMilner) January 24, 2021
“Of course, we take from it that we scored two and we had other situations where we created well but they scored three. There were obvious mistakes around the goals. If you are in a situation you don’t like, you take steps to get out of it.”
The goals were the only positive on a night which saw Liverpool extend their poor run to one win in their last seven games and intensified calls for the Reds to sign a new centre-back this month, but Klopp insisted he still has faith in his squad's ability to fight through this patch.
“Don’t worry about us, as a group we are really together and we have to solve it together,” he added. “We are just in this moment and we try to win football games again.
“Tonight [Sunday] I didn’t see any problems with confidence. If you don’t score for a while it’s not good for your confidence but it’s all about how you deal with it.”
Next up for Liverpool is a trip to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to face Jose Mourinho's Spurs on Thursday, after which the Reds face tricky meetings against West Ham, Brighton, Manchester City and Leicester.