Jurgen Klopp says he won't be ripping up his Liverpool blueprint after a fourth Premier League defeat in 12 games was inflicted by Leeds United on Saturday night.
After Mohamed Salah had cancelled out Rodrigo's early goal following a mix-up between Alisson Becker and Joe Gomez, Crysencio Summerville struck a late winner to end a 29-game unbeaten home run in the Premier League for Klopp's men dating back to March 2021.
It leaves the Reds languishing in ninth, 13 points behind leaders Manchester City and eight behind Newcastle United, who occupy fourth after a 4-0 win at home to Aston Villa on Saturday afternoon.
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Despite losing a quarter of their games in what has been a woefully under-par campaign to date, Klopp says now is not the time to be implementing any major alterations to his approach as they prepare for another busy week that sees them host Napoli in the Champions League on Tuesday before a trip to Tottenham next Sunday.
"It is not always that difficult or impossible [to control games] but tonight it was," Klopp said. "There is no excuse for it but we have the problem from the first day of injuries or half-fit players and that is what we carry with us and that is why some players play too often and others have to play too early and the next game is already waiting.
"Napoli now, some say we're already through, but we will need to put in a proper performance. But you need 11 starters and then a few days later we play away at Tottenham. That's our situation.
"So now is not the time for a major overhaul. We have to fight through and to fight for momentum, for confidence, for security, for all these things. You have to fight and that is what we do.
"I would have taken a point tonight, nobody would have been happy but me when you see the game and how we conceded first, but my main issue is how we defended the second goal. When you don't have the ball, everyone has to defend, and we were not all there.
"There might be an explanation for it which I don't have at this moment, but that was my problem at the moment, but it happened anyway."
Klopp added: "It is difficult but not impossible [to control the game]. The boys really want to, so that means we speed up with the ball, an example was Robbo goes on the outside, then goes inside, but has no option to play it and then loses the challenges twice. Then it's a counter attack. How often do we see Robbo doing that and he has different options? He can [usually] pass the ball inside and all these kinds of things but there was nobody today.
"In these moments we show we really want it but we have to play smarter against a compact formation that Leeds obviously have. You have to be calm in moments, I know that sounds really ridiculous when you want to score goals, but in football it's like this and you have to change the rhythm in these moments.
"We didn't do that well enough in the moment and then that leads to situations where we lose the ball again and that means space for a counter-attack or whatever and it doesn’t look good. That means you cannot get a real momentum in the game. And it doesn’t feel right. That's what I wanted to say.
"It is a mix of everything of course. It is no secret that pretty much everybody on the pitch can play better football. There's no doubt about that. You have to do the simple stuff right and then you gain confidence and momentum. We had that in different games but today we couldn’t get it and that is what I mean."
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