Steve Cooper has detailed the gameplan that almost earned his Nottingham Forest side a shock result at Liverpool.
In a topsy-turvy Premier League encounter at Anfield on Saturday afternoon, Diogo Jota twice put Liverpool ahead after the break only for first former Reds defender Neco Williams and then Morgan Gibbs-White to equalise with deflected efforts.
However, Mohamed Salah’s 27th goal of the season secured Liverpool a 3-2 win and kept Forest in the drop zone while pushing the home side into seventh and just six points off the top four.
PLAYER RATINGS: Diogo Jota and Alisson good against Nottingham Forest
TALKING POINT: Liverpool finally have their 'game-breaker' back in huge boost for Klopp
Liverpool dominated the ball – ending with 81% possession and 18 shots on goal – but Cooper believes it would have been a mistake to play an open game.
“The players stuck to the plan and committed to what we thought we needed to do get a result,” said the Forest boss. “It’s a dangerous game if you open the game up against Liverpool and we weren’t going to do that. You have seen them put teams away really quickly. We did that part of the game really well.
“If you watch any of the teams in a situation like us, you are not seeing loads of free-flowing football but teams trying to get a result.
“It was already going to be an incredibly tough game, but to think we have restricted Liverpool to not many open play chances, scored two and hit the bar and got in some positions where we should do better with final passes, it tells me that we did some really decent things in the game.
“We caused Liverpool problems with our long throw-ins. But you can’t get away from the fact we lost and that’s the be all and end all.”
Forest had previously scored only five times in 15 games on the road in the Premier League this season.
And Cooper added: “The result and conceding three again add to that negative run we are on. If you look at the game in isolation the huge frustration for us is that we have conceded three goals from set-pieces.
“It was avoidable. We could have cleared the first one, and the second one we haven’t marked properly runners going into the box. That’s the real frustration.
“Everyone knows we struggle to get goals away from home this season, so that makes it even more frustrating.”
Forest, who are 19th, host Brighton in midweek before going to Brentford next Saturday. And Cooper said: “It was always going to be a big week for us. This is just the first part of it. At any time of the season coming here and getting something from Anfield, you have to do everything absolutely right and what we didn’t do right was the set-pieces.
“The decent things we did in the game give us a bit of hope to cling on to that we can have a chance of getting results we need between now and end of the season. We have to use the frustration and disappointment as motivation.”
READ NEXT:
Liverpool fans notice what Steven Gerrard's son did when he walked out of Anfield tunnel
Jurgen Klopp admits Liverpool player has more 'difficult' role in new formation
Fabio Carvalho deal could make sense for Liverpool due to impact of squad rules
Mane scores in Bayern loss that could change Bellingham reality for Liverpool
Linda Pizzuti makes Mohamed Salah point after Liverpool win over Forest
