Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes Liverpool’s pre-season opener against Manchester United came “a bit too early” in their warmup schedule, after suffering a 4-0 defeat in Bangkok.
Even those it was only a pre-season friendly, the Scousers are making excuses for losing Tuesday’s game, and they are putting it down to their preparations. The German coach was a lot more chippy when it came to aiming sly digs at United a few days ago.
As Klopp reflected in his post-match press conference, this may have been “a bit too early” for his side as they still work on building their fitness ahead of the new season. I’m sure Erik ten Hag would argue that he still has a lot of work to do with his players’ fitness before the competitive games kick-off in August.
“The game obviously came a bit too early for us, for a few of our players, you could see that as well,” Klopp told reporters in Bangkok, as quoted by the Daily Mail.
“Individual mistakes happen in football, but we did them in moments where they were not to sort anymore, pretty much, because we were then that open.
“It’s all to explain, it was pretty clear where wee made the mistakes, but in the end you have to keep on playing.
“That’s what we did, we could have scored, I think, three or four in the last five minutes but didn’t. That’s our fault.
“So: atmosphere, great; welcome, fantastic; organisation, really, really good; and result, not. That’s the situation, pretty much.”
United ran out 4-0 winners at the Rajamangala National Stadium on Tuesday and it was clear from the opening minutes that Erik ten Hag’s side were taking no prisoners.
The Red Devils looked fitter out of the two sides and it’s encouraging more than anything. On top of that, you can’t analyse these matches too critically, and we won’t be getting overly excited about pre-season fixtures that mean so little.
Liverpool fans will argue that they typically begin their summer preparations with a lower profile friendly, but United could say that too – because every other fixture is of a less profile. It goes without saying that every fan of these two clubs looks for United v Liverpool first when the fixtures are announced each season.
