Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp insists The Reds have “nobody else to blame” but themselves after failing to finish Newcastle off on Saturday.
Mohamed Salah’s early strike put Liverpool on the front foot. However, some dismal finishing and poor game management meant Klopp and co had to settle for a draw after Joe Willock’s injury-time equaliser for The Magpies.
The result leaves Liverpool four points behind Chelsea and the top four with just five games remaining to fight for points.
Speaking at his post-match press conference, Klopp was asked how tough the result was to take:
“Very. Very tough to take but there is nobody else to blame but ourselves. When you create chances like we created today and you don’t use them then you keep the game open. That’s what we did, but again, that’s football – the oldest and most important football rule [is] you better use your chances when you have them because they will come back again. That’s what we didn’t do and that’s why in the end Newcastle deserve a point because they scored a goal that was disallowed and as far as I remember it was the first time we were lucky with VAR, to be honest, but we didn’t even take that present. We gave them another one, they used that, so it’s a 1-1.”
Klopp was also quizzed on how Liverpool might improve their sharpness in front of goal:
“There is only one way: to go again, to go again, to go again. In training, you can believe me that we do often enough finishing when we have time to train – and we have now time to train, obviously, so it’s not about that. You can see it: in a positive face, in a really positive face, you miss chances but it is just that nobody talks about them. When you have a really good game, you have 25 shots and like 10 or 12 are on target, [but] most of the time only two or three of them are in and that means you miss a lot of chances in good games, in really good games. But you don’t care because you are in a positive moment and you just know, ‘OK, good information, that’s how we do it, that’s how we should do it again and then we can score…’ In our situation obviously still, which is tough to accept but we see it, we score with the first, don’t score with the second, don’t score with the third, don’t score with the fourth and stuff like this and then obviously the confidence drops and you can see that. That’s not OK, but it happened and that’s why these situations are different, but the only way you can do it is you have to create, you have to create chances and you have to bring yourself into positions from where you can score. That’s what we will do.”
Next up for Liverpool is a trip to Old Trafford to face second-placed Manchester United this Sunday afternoon.
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