It was deja vu for Jurgen Klopp in his post-match presser as he bemoaned the lack of duels won in Liverpool’s 3-2 defeat to Toulouse.
The German admitted he wasn’t concerned by the performance on display in France, though didn’t dispute the reality that Carlos Novell’s men were deserved winners in the Europa League group stage clash.
“It was well deserved to lose because they won pretty much all the decisive challenges, battles,” the 56-year-old was quoted as saying by liverpoolfc.com.
“We have too many situations where we should have won the ball but we didn’t.
“On top of that we gave the ball away easily at least twice – one was a goal, the other I am not sure if it was an allowed goal or a disallowed goal. Counter-attack, third goal, last line too deep. Defending-wise it was just not good enough.”
One man who may have felt the comments were at least slightly directed at him may be Wataru Endo (signed for £16.2m this summer) who failed to win a single ground duel (0/5) on the night, according to Sofascore.
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Not good enough from Liverpool
To be completely fair to the Japan skipper, he was far from being the only poor performer in a heavily rotated side.
Alexis Mac Allister likewise could share some of the blame burden, having only won 2/10 ground duels – in stark contrast to Harvey Elliott’s numbers (6/8 ground duels won).
Approaching the Christmas period, however, it’s difficult to see how exactly Endo manages to break into the first team at any point for our league fixtures if he doesn’t start meeting a key Klopp demand.
Don’t expect to beat the underdog every game and put out a weaker team. Put out the strongest team with intent to win.
Just a bad day at the office. Lesson learnt.
How about the Greek Scouser?
His mistake cost us the game
Pointing at individual players was not the point, every players in that game should play at they usually do. Starting at Luton game was the example when strikers need to find goals which they didnt! Thinking that Liverpool already safe to play the next round was ridiculous. When losing the game then start to find who to blame! l am a liverpool fan since the kevin keegan era n never saw liverpool blaming players. when they lost or winning. Supporters want to see liverpool winning games again and not blaming individuals! Why buy the players when they are not good?