After nearly three months of fighting for a historic quartet, Liverpool found themselves in a very awkward position after suffering intensified on Wednesday when they suffered a humiliating 4-1 defeat to Napoli Italy at the start of their League campaign champions. , who reached his final match last season.
The defeat of German manager Klopp’s team at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium in the first round of the first group stage showed the scale of the problem that the Reds faced at the beginning of this season.
It’s not just about losing for the third time in a row against the stronghold of Naples, but also about the fact that the team is in seventh place in the Premier League after 6 stages. Liverpool’s defeat on Wednesday was the biggest defeat on the continent since a 1-5 European Cup second-round defeat against current group rivals Ajax in 1966.
There was a possibility that the Reds would come back from the south of Italy with a more difficult defeat, if Brazilian goalkeeper Alison Becker had not saved a penalty to Nigerian Victor Osimhen in the first half, which the hosts ended 3-0, and then added a fourth. at the beginning of the second.
Klopp’s side have only won two of the seven matches played this season, at local and continental levels, in a series that included a 1-2 loss to rivals Manchester United.
The Reds are suffering from a slow start problem not only this season but also in the continuation of last season as he was the one to only score once in the last 14 games in all competitions.
“We seem to need to replicate ourselves,” Klopp told BT Sport, “a lot is missing. The most interesting thing (sarcastically) is that we need to do this in the midst of the Premier League season and the Champions League campaign.”
Klopp doesn’t have much time to come up with solutions in light of what lies ahead next week against Ajax at Anfield and then at Chelsea in the domestic league before he breathes a sigh of relief at the pause due to behind the windows of international matches.
“We don’t work as a team,” admitted the German coach. We don’t play well enough, it’s clear, it’s clear and everyone can see it. We play in the best league in the world and we have a strong group in the Champions League, but this is a task that we have to face.”
“We must go back to basics”
The German refused to blame anyone on the team, saying: “This is my responsibility. I need time to think about it, my job is to find solutions and we have to reset ourselves and start over.”
Klopp has suffered a string of injuries that have affected powerful elements in the team and he will feel some relief with Cameroonian Joel Matip, Spaniard Thiago Alcantara and Portuguese Diogo Jota in the second half.
