Jurgen Klopp confesses he was personally affected by Liverpool’s lack of counter-pressing on a “strange” afternoon.
Tahith Chong’s 80th-minute opener was equalized by substitute Luis Diaz’s stunning injury-time header to earn the Reds a 1-1 Premier League draw at Luton Town on Sunday.
Despite Darwin Nunez hitting the crossbar and home goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski making many stops, Liverpool were far from their best for long stretches of the game.
And Klopp, whose club has risen to third place, has pointed to a number of flaws with his squad’s performance.
“It was a strange game,” the Reds stated. “It was an odd feeling after the game.” I believe we should have won, but the draw was the fair outcome. And we might have lost. That’s the way it is.
“Kudos to Luton for a job well done.” To be honest, despite everything they did, we generated opportunities but failed to capitalize on them. We were not cool enough in these situations. We should have scored more goals and generated more opportunities.
“It was fine; we created enough; we just needed to put one or two away and win 1-0 or 2-0 and everything would be fine.” Nobody has ever won here with such a bizarre outcome. I knew why before, but now I know why they do it so well.
“What I didn’t like was that we had 0.0 counter-pressing in the first half.” To be honest, that is something I take personally. It’s not okay, I told the boys. I know they wanted to do it; the question is why they didn’t. I’ll figure it out eventually. That’s probably not rocket science. I’ll have to rewind it.”
“I told the boys at halftime ‘good, good, good here, be calm, be patient,’ stuff like that, and if we now put counter-press into that, it would be helpful as we had more possession phases and longer ones, and they are less organized at that moment,” Klopp continued.
“Of course, we’ve all seen these games before.” The condition did not improve with time. If you score once, the gaps close. But at 0-0, Luton’s idea is perfectly great; set-pieces and counter-attacks keep them in the game. You must ensure that they are not in the game, but they were. They scored on a counter-attack, and I think everyone knows we should have won the ball; losing the ball on the 18-yard line wasn’t good enough.”
