Milner on Red Star Defeat: “We Will Have to Play Better”

Hard to find anything uplifting to say about that 2-0 defeat to Red Star. Liverpool conceded early on from a set piece and a long range strike, and subsequently had a number of chances but were able to get few on target, let alone in the net. A game we would all like to forget quickly.

James Milner was unsurprisingly honest about how poor Liverpool were.

“We didn’t start well enough”, BBC Sport report Milner as saying. “We have had enough chances to get back into the game and we didn’t take them. Passing the ball wasn’t good enough. We didn’t start and when you don’t start in the Champions League you get punished.

”You can’t give teams the start, the crowd is big for them and it’s been a long time since they’ve been in the Champions League. Napoli found it tough when they came here and we knew it was going to be a tough place to come.

”We need to win our games, it’s on our shoulders, we have some good sides to play and it’s in our hands but we will have to play better than we did tonight.

”I think the chances aren’t going in for us, we had a number of times in front of goal, times where the goalkeeper saved and times where we weren’t on target.

”We will keep going and playing because it doesn’t take much for those chances to go in.”

Milner is absolutely correct here. Liverpool were so far from their fluid best. There were a number of chances in the second half but this was in part because Red Star were happy to soak up the pressure and ride out their 2-0 lead. We were playing poorly even at 0-0. Things will need to improve very quickly if Liverpool are to avoid dropping into the Europa League.