Ralph Hasenhuttl was not happy with Liverpool’s winner over Southampton on Tuesday night as he admitted his frustration with his own side’s defending.
Joel Matip headed home from a corner to give the Reds a 2-1 win after Takumi Minamino had cancelled out Nathan Redmond’s stunning opener. Jurgen Klopp had made nine changes to his side which took to the field at St. Mary’s, following Saturday’s FA Cup final win over Chelsea, with the Saints boss not surprised by the starting XI selected.
And while he praised the strength of Liverpool’s squad, he admitted his side played a ‘scary’ game against the Reds and only had themselves to blame for the winning goal.
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“I think we have played against a good team that made a lot of changes but still has a lot of quality upfront,” he told reporters after the final whistle. “You could see it. I would have done the same (made lots of changes) to be honest.
“Jurgen is convinced about these players. They have real quality. It is still a team with a lot of quality. They have come with this team to an FA Cup final. They play this team very often so we know that they are good.
“We took a lot of risks with the ball today, it sometimes looked a little bit scary to be honest. Against the ball, we tried a different way to defend. Deeper because we were struggling in the last weeks with conceding goals. Easy goals and were too open.
“It worked okay but not perfect otherwise we wouldn’t concede a goal. We concede the first goal when we are all behind the ball, in the box and cannot stop Taki scoring. They played it quite well, I must say. You can see in these moments that especially Firmino is very strong in these areas and Taki made a good deep run.”
“Second half, sometimes we tried to surprise them with the 4-2-2-2. Sometimes we were pressing higher but you could immediately see it wasn’t perfect and they played through the lines.”
He continued: “Then you go deeper again and try to keep the game open for as long as possible but you concede a very easy second goal. You can clear the ball at the near post.
“The plan is to clear the ball at the first post, this is the plan. If he clears it at the first post, we don’t have to speak about it.
“We flicked the ball to a player who then heads it from 12 yards, off the back of our head, over our goalkeeper and into the goal. I cannot blame the goalkeeper.
“It’s the only really frustrating thing for me this evening, that we conceded a goal like this. We know we are not the tallest but the team we played today also are not the tallest. They have two good centre-backs who are coming but it was too easy how we conceded.”
