Jürgen Klopp: “We Had The Right Chances To Win”

While much of the conversation surrounding Saturday’s draw has been concerning Liverpool’s consistently terrible defense, some attention is being paid to Liverpool’s inability to capitalize on their opportunities in front of the net. Sean Dyche was open about his strategy to play “long-ball football” against the Reds when Burnley visited Anfield, and it was a strategy that worked to contain Liverpool’s vicious attack. With 35 shots and only 9 on of those on target, only one touched the net thanks to Mo Salah, manager Jürgen Klopp said he would be more concerned if we weren’t taking chances at all. So that’s good?

“I know the mother of all is goals, it’s the opportunity, it’s the chance. If we were not creating I would be concerned. Already a few guys from the radio thought we should create a lot more, that’s difficult because there’s still another team on the pitch,” Klopp said to the Echo. “But we had the right ones and big ones, enough to win.

“There were situations of course, now don’t pass, now don’t shoot, but that’s not how football works. On a very good day, yes, but obviously it was a good but not a very good day, so that’s why we still had a few wrong decisions on the pitch.

“This is a really hard game to play, a lot of teams already recognized it, so let’s carry on.”

The Reds were dominant in most other areas of the match on Saturday, to see them fail to see out a win after suffering a draw earlier in the week is disheartening to say the least. At least in an attempt to try something new, Klopp made seven changes from the team that met Sevilla last Wednesday to the team that saw Burnley, but it was a combination of things against Liverpool that made them unlucky. Not lack of depth or training time between matches, according to the boss.

“It was the best game we’ve played so far when we’ve made seven changes,” he added. “We already made some changes but you can see now an outstanding, good team.

“We could work on the training pitch on what we did today, we had only one session but that’s for all the team. It’s the same.

“It’s not that we have big issues where we say ‘okay, if we don’t change that, we never will win the game again’. We all know that. In a lot of moments, fortune clearly wasn’t on our side.

“We don’t take it as an excuse but I cannot ignore the positive things we have done, it’s not allowed in my job.

“We cannot change the situation, having more training time or whatever, that’s how it is for all the top teams. For us it’s the same, we have enough time to improve.”

Yes, there is plenty of time to make things right, but if there’s a failure to put your lessons into practice for the better, to learn from your mistakes, you’re stuck repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. That’s the definition of something, I’m sure of it.