Jurgen Klopp believes Liverpool “lost the right game” after they progressed to the Champions League quarter-finals for the fourth time in five years.
The Reds were beaten 1-0 at home by Inter Milan in their round of 16 second leg on Tuesday but progressed 2-1 on aggregate after their victory at the San Siro three weeks ago.
Lautaro Martinez gave the Italian champions hope when scoring on 62 minutes only for Alexis Sanchez to be sent off for the visitors a minute later for a second bookable offence.
And despite the scare, Klopp is convinced his team deserved the victory over the course of the tie.
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“Peter Krawietz (Liverpool assistant manager) always says the art of football is to lose the right games,” said the Reds boss.
“I still hate it (losing). But if there was any kind of game we could have afforded to lose it was tonight because the main target of this competition is to get through.
“It’s not that I’m over the moon. But I’m really happy we went through because when we saw the draw in the first place we thought ‘okay, that’s a tough one’.
“The goal was conceded we shouldn’t have conceded even though the finish was brilliant, we could have done differently before then.
“Over the two legs we deserved it. That’s fine.
“We had some problem in the game for different reasons, one is the quality of the opponent, a really good football team.
“We know their set-up a little bit through facing Leeds with Bielsa but Inter have more quality and that makes it really difficult.”
Liverpool missed chances to put the tie out of sight with Joel Matip and Mohamed Salah twice striking the crossbar while substitute Luis Diaz was denied late on by a brilliant goal-line block from Artur Vidal.
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But Klopp admitted there were areas his team could clearly improve after losing for the first time at Anfield in 12 months.
“I didn’t like our counter-press,” he said. “I don’t think we won any balls back in the opening 20 minutes.
“You have to be expansive when you have possession and we lost the ball in strange moments and then we had to chase the situation. That’s not exactly how we wanted it.
“It’s a big if, but if we would have used our chances from set-pieces and other situations, it was a completely different story. It was a bit slapstick how we missed the chances in the end.
“It was more exciting than we wanted, not for long because after the red card we could control it”
Klopp added: “These days happen, you just have to know about it and make sure you don’t do it again.
“We could have played better, but not too much better as the opponent was really good.
“It’s fair that we are through against a really strong opponent, now let’s carry on.”
The draw for the quarter-finals takes place in Nyon, Switzerland at 11am on Friday, March 18.
