Liverpool strung together a three-match losing streak in all competitions for the first time this season, as it came away with a 4-1 defeat to Manchester City on Premier League matchday 29.
As was the case in their first Premier League meeting of the season back in October, Manchester City had its way in possession against Liverpool. This time around, the Reds failed to orchestrate multiple promising attacking sequences, as it tallied a mere one shot on target in the contest. Manchester City’s double-pivot duo of Rodri and John Stones patrolled possession with ease, while Jack Grealish and Kevin De Bruyne did not have much of a problem pushing up play into the final third.
During his post-match press conference, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp took some time to touch on just where it went wrong for his team on the day. Overall, he noted that just four Liverpool players had “OK” performances against the reigning Premier League champions.
“We were not there anymore; we were completely open, we were too passive, too deep, too far away from everything,” Klopp said. “If you look at the game, I think we had around about four performances which were OK: the two midfielders with Hendo and Fab worked a lot, tried to close gaps, Cody especially in possession and Ali, of course, and then that’s obviously very difficult.
“If you want to get something from here, then you have to play 11 players, 14, 15 players have to be on the top of their game and that was not the case again. So after being 3-1 down, it is anyway difficult to come back here.”
Klopp added that even if Manchester City had played with 10 men in the fixture, he was “not sure if we would have won.”
The German manager is now looking ahead to his squad’s upcoming Premier League matchup against 11th-place side Chelsea on Tuesday.
“It is not a lot of time, but it is time — we don’t play tomorrow, we play Tuesday,” Klopp said. “We should play better, especially more consistently.”
In the big picture, Liverpool currently holds the No. 8 spot in the league standings with 42 points through 27 matches played.
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