Jurgen Klopp was frustrated by Liverpool dropping more Premier League points against Brighton at Anfield
(Picture: PA)Jurgen Klopp lamented certain aspects of Liverpool’s defensive display as “horrendous” after they dropped yet more Premier League points in a throwback display.
The Reds showed great character to battle back from 2-0 down to lead Brighton 3-2 in their first top-flight fixture for 28 days on Saturday, though eventually had to settle for a share of the spoils after Leandro Trossard completed his hat-trick late on - becoming just the third opposition player ever to net a Premier League treble at Anfield and the first since 2009.
The high-flying visitors were more than worthy of a point in their first match under Graham Potter’s replacement Roberto De Zerbi, creating numerous chances in both halves as they continued their excellent start to the season to remain sitting fourth in the table.
And Klopp admitted it was “horrendous and really horrible to watch” the Seagulls’ attackers repeatedly pick up so much space between the lines throughout a topsy-turvy 90 minutes.
Saturday’s draw means Liverpool have now won just two of their opening seven league matches so far this term, leaving them ninth and already 11 points adrift of early pacesetters Arsenal, who beat Tottenham 3-1 earlier in the north London derby.
Klopp admitted that confidence was not high among his players at present as they prepare for a Champions League double-header against Rangers, which is sandwiched between huge top-flight showdowns with Arsenal and Manchester City.
“Concerning I am not sure is the right word but we can’t ignore the fact,” he said. “But the Ajax game (their previous match 18 days ago in which they scored an 89th-minute winner) didn’t give us any kind of rhythm.
“That’s something you usually get from these situations. With the late goal we would have taken a lot of things into the next game, but unfortunately we didn’t play and since then that feeling is pretty much gone.
“We had confident moments today - Bobby [Firmino] for the second goal, you could see a lot of that - but the passing game was not good.
“We passed balls all over the place, which we can only explain by saying we were not confident in that moment, because of how the game started. We are under pressure, we don’t ignore that, we don’t increase it every day but it is there.”
Klopp admitted that Liverpool’s lack of defensive conviction was a throwback to his early days at the club and conceded he did not fully expect his side to hold on when they recovered from Trossard’s early double to lead 3-2 courtesy of Roberto Firmino’s brace and an Adam Webster own goal.
“If we are 100 per cent honest, it is not the first time. It is a sign that the confidence level is now not extraordinarily high,” he added. “In our situation, if you get confidence back you want to build on it and increase it, and it was obvious that the first goal, especially, and then the second goal didn’t help in that.
“If you watch football long enough, you remember games here where we had situations years ago when we were only one goal up and it happened quite frequently that everybody was nearly having a heart attack because we were just not convincing in these moments.
“It reminded me of that a bit today. I cannot say I was 100 per cent convinced that we would not concede a goal when we were 3-2 up. We should defend all three goals better, no doubt about that, but in different areas, not just in the last moment. 3-3 feels like a defeat even though it is not, and we have to fight through this.”
