Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp believes Liverpool looked mentally fatigued as they lost 1-0 to Brighton on Wednesday night.
A scrappy goal from Steven Alzate was enough to give Brighton a deserved victory at Anfield as Liverpool fell to their second successive home defeat in the league.
At his post-match press conference, Klopp was asked if he felt Liverpool could still close the gap between themselves and Manchester City:
“The gap to City, I know, I’m manager of Liverpool and I have to say [because] you always ask and we were champions last year, so I have to say, ‘Yeah, oh my God, we want to be champions…’ Yes, we want [that], but you need the games for it, you need the performances for it, and we don’t have. So, that’s the truth as well. We fight for other things, we fight for three points. It is not decided yet who will get the three points on Sunday, so we have to play better and we will try as well. Then we will see. These gaps are not interesting in the moment because they are the result of the results we had already. What we can influence is the next games and we will try for that. For tonight, it was not enough – we saw that, we know that and we have to change that.”
Klopp praised Brighton and was open about the fact that the visitors were the better team on another dismal night for The Reds.
“Brighton won the game and rightly so, [it was] deserved. They were fresher than us tonight and did more good things than we did. We lost too many easy balls. The best way to defend Brighton is to keep the ball, to play football yourself and when we did that, we had control at least but didn’t create a lot. I said now plenty of times in all the interviews outside, for me the team looked tonight – and it’s long ago we looked like this – fatigued, mentally fatigued and that leads to not the best legs as well. It was a tough week and today we were not fresh enough, that means then [not] good enough to break the formation of Brighton. In the end, they scored a goal, had other chances, we kind of as well, but they scored and that’s why they deserved to win.”
Regarding the injury status of Sadio Mané and Diogo Jota, Klopp said:
“Diogo is – I don’t know exactly – a couple of weeks, two, three, four. I’m not sure. And Sadio we will see. He might be available for the weekend, I don’t know. He didn’t train with the team today. We will see.”
Liverpool must now regroup and focus their attention on Sunday’s huge clash with Manchester City.
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