Jurgen Klopp: “We Didn’t Win Enough Challenges”

Liverpool’s 2-2 FA Cup draw against Wolves saw a rare error by Alisson Becker and lacklustre defending by the Reds. Jurgen Klopp pointed to the confident start made by Liverpool, which was then halted by Alisson conceding a goal. which in turn gave Wolves more confidence.

“The goal we scored was outstanding, outstanding, and we had a few really good balls we played, a few good situations where we played in their formation. But for the whole game I thought we didn’t win enough challenges, to be honest”, said Klopp.

“There are a lot of situations where I thought they win a challenge and all of sudden we are completely open; we had two or three players in the challenge moving to the ball and when you are there, fine, you have to win the ball. If you don’t do that and they can get out then it looks like, ‘Where are they?”

Klopp believes that the game was not that open, but not winning key challenges exposed Liverpool. On Liverpool’s overall defending, he had a similar view.

“Whatever you play, high-line, deeper-line, ball-orientated, man-orientated – you have to win challenges”, he said.

“I can understand, it looks open in moments, but it is just open because we think we win the challenge and then we don’t win it and that’s then really tricky to deal with in the end. It’s not that they had now chance after chance, what it causes us is a lot of effort to put it right in the end and if you are already there, so you could win it where you are, then you don’t have to run back and try to solve the problems there.”