Klopp Talk: I Would’ve Taken the Draw

A worldie of a performance from the opposing goalkeeper. A fragile defense that sends anxiety through the Anfield crowd. A deflating late concession.

The spectre of ETW (Everything is The Worst for the newer TLO followers) appears to have reared its ugly head once again for Liverpool this season.

For the second week running, the Reds followed up on a rousing midweek Champions League performance by losing to a relegation battling team in the Premier League.

As they did in last weekend’s loss to then-bottom Nottingham Forest, the Reds did a struggling Leeds a huge solid in their bid for Premier League survival, capitulating 2-1 at Anfield to lift under-fire manager Jesse Marsch’s side from the foot of the league table.

A woeful defensive performance was punctuated by a conceded goal through a disastrous back pass from Joe Gomez to open the scoring, with Mohamed Salah’s quick equalizer then bookended by a late, god-awful gift of a winner to Crysencio Summerville.

“It was a set-back, absolutely,” Jurgen Klopp admitted to Sky Sports of the Gomez error. “I thought we had a really good start then conceded a freakish goal.

“You can watch this game completely, you cannot defend like we did for the second goal but we did, that’s why we lost. Otherwise, it would have been a point and we go from there. Now we have nothing and it feels completely different.

“A team performance is always made up of individual performances. One leads to the other.”

No goalkeeper in the league this season has registered more saves than Leeds keeper Illan Meslier’s nine on the day, with the likes of Darwin Nunez, Roberto Firmino and Salah all spurning gilt-edged chances to take the lead with the score tied until late on.

“At 1-1 we had some massive chances,” Klopp said later to the BBC. “But the biggest disappointment of the game is how we defended for the second goal. That shouldn’t happen.

“I would have easily taken the draw in this moment, which is difficult, but now we stand here with nothing, which is completely different.

“But we have to fight through this and we will. So many things are unlike us in this moment. I am sorry it is like this, but that is the situation. I am not sure how deep you can dig, but we will. It is like it is and we will work on solutions.

“We have to have a look at this game first, try to understand it a bit more and go from there.”

The Reds once again failed to capitalize, on positive results above them in the table and now have to beat Napoli in the Champions League in three days’ time by four goals to try clinch top spot in the group.