Liverpool fell to their third defeat of the season – the second since securing the title in June – at Arsenal on Wednesday night. Jürgen Klopp insisted his players will learn from the human errors that cost them points at the Emirates Stadium.
Sadio Mané gave The Reds a well-deserved first-half lead but some out-of-character errors from Virgil van Dijk and Alisson allowed Arsenal to go in 2-1 ahead at the break.
Liverpool had almost 70% possession, 13 corners compared to Arsenal’s 2 and 24 shots in contrast to the 3 attempts The Gunners had. However, the one statistic that matters went in Arsenal’s favour in a good night for Mikel Arteta’s side.
Speaking to Liverpoolfc.com after the game, Klopp highlighted the positive nature of Liverpool’s performance, their continued ability to create opportunities plus the human errors that cost them and can be learned from.
“We were very dominant, a lot of good football. In the end, why are we in the situation we are? Because we are a very good football team and we usually work on a concentration level that is nearly unhuman. Today we made some human errors, which is not so nice but not completely surprising that it can happen whenever. Tonight it happened.
Usually, we learn from situations like this, we will do that now again. The boys don’t want to hide or say, ‘It’s not my fault’ or whatever, that’s all clear on the table. But around that, I don’t think I ever played a game with 24 to three shots against Arsenal, I can’t remember that. There are a lot of goals usually when we play against each other, but not that many tonight – at least on our side. But that dominance we never had before, I can’t remember it at least. So I’m happy about that.”
The Liverpool manager also spoke of the need to be self-critical in their review of the performance and to examine what needs to be improved upon after such a defeat.
“… it’s a results game and we want to have results. We don’t have one tonight. We are very self-critical; we take that now and try to improve in this department, because after our ‘break’ when we conceded the goals, we were in charge again and played a good game. But when you have to chase a game and they are throwing in everything, it’s getting a bit annoying because of time play and they try everything – it’s normal, no offence, it’s normal – but that doesn’t help. It’s better you are 1-0 up and score the second one, then you are in a flow and the other team doesn’t know exactly what to do. Now they just knew, ‘We have to defend it with all we have.’ They did that and so they deserve the three points.”
The result leaves Liverpool on 93 points with two games remaining. Therefore, The Reds can no longer reach or bypass Manchester City’s 100-point record from 2017/18. A first league title success in 30 years will have to do us for now.
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