Jurgen Klopp made a huge admission after Liverpool recorded their joint-worst defeat in the Champions League, saying that his side “need to reinvent ourselves.”
A 4-1 defeat to Napoli, having gone behind inside five minutes and been 3-0 down at half-time, continued the awful record of conceding first – that’s now 10 times in the last 14 games.
“[It’s] not that difficult to explain when you saw the game,” said a visibly downbeat Klopp post-match to BT Sport.
“Napoli played a really good game and we didn’t. That’s the first explanation.”
The boss admitted that the second and third goals were “served on a plate” and that his side were “never really in the game.”
“[We were] not compact defensively or offensively,” he said. “Until Thiago entered the pitch I can’t remember one counter-pressing situation. The answer for this is we were just too wide.”
Then came the big admission about the bigger picture of the squad and the club:
“It looks like we need to reinvent ourselves. There’s a lot of things lacking.
“We have to try to find a set up to be much better in pretty much everything.”
With literally every player bar Luis Diaz looking well, well below their best, Klopp did take the opportunity to note that the problems are not down to personal issues within the squad.
“We were not working as a team,” he said. “It is nothing to do with personal stuff or whatever.
“It’s my responsibility. I need time to think about it. A few things are really obvious. It’s my job to find it out.”
Liverpool have two wins from their opening seven games of the season in all competitions, a 9-0 thrashing of Bournemouth and a last-gasp win over Newcastle – those being the only two times this season they have led in a game.
It truly is worrying times.
