Jürgen Klopp and the Two Goals Conceded

That feeling when a draw feels like a loss. It’s weird and I’m not afraid to tell you that I don’t like it. It weighs heavy like a Dejan Lovren glory run into unnecessary and ultimately fruitless places. But you can’t say Liverpool fans didn’t have plenty of time to prepare for the all-too-regular defensive frailties in the side to sabotage a win in the end. Straight out of the gate the signs were there to see. Trouble brewing.

Going forward, Liverpool looked excellent against Sevilla. Alberto Moreno obviously put his swagger boots on for the big event. He was a terror up the left, combining with multiple terrors all across the assaulting band of players. But it’s time for the but. And I’m talking about how exposed the team becomes, giving up just the right amount of space to allow for devastation to occur.

“The first goal starts in a situation in the midfield when we can shoot the ball easily away,” says Jürgen Klopp of the buildup to Sevilla taking an early lead.

“Emre is a little bit late in the situation, that’s the first moment I realise something will happen. Until then, it was a nothing situation.

“That’s a press ball, in the half-space on the left-hand side. And in the end, I think it was through the legs of Dejan. I don’t know exactly how it was.

*Well, it wasn’t exactly that. Closer to Lovren lost the flight of a ball which never changed trajectory.

“That’s not, in the end, perfectly defended but I have to see it again. It’s, of course, concentration, it’s nothing else in this situation.”

Nothing else at that time maybe, but as a singular, all-encompassing sort of situation it’s the propensity for this team to lose concentration when taking up defensive positions that indeed makes it something.

“We started the game how I thought we could,” continued Klopp. “Kind of dominant, played football, kind of good moments and that was pretty much their first offensive situation and then they scored.”

Sevilla’s first offensive situation and they scored. The first time in the game that Liverpool is tested to defend. There’s a hint of chaos in any defensive movement in the box but the amount of havoc this team unleashes upon itself is worrying.

And I’d put my hand up to vote for the changing of the goalkeepers project to officially end for the foreseeable future. Consistency is my hot button issue. I go mad for it. Simon Mignolet or Loris Karius. Spin a wheel if you have to. Pick a card. Flip a chicken. Just choose one for the majority. They don’t need a rest. They aren’t like normal people. They’re goalkeepers.

“That’s all space for improvement for all of us,” Klopp added. “We need to learn to be dominant and not to give easy goals away and the first one was, for sure, not necessary and too easy.

“The second, I have absolutely no clue how they came through that, to be honest. I have to see that again.

“It’s not a general defending problem but we have to improve, one hundred percent.”