Andy Robertson was quick to acknowledge that Liverpool were “too open” at Napoli in a “deserved” loss, pointing to the fact that pressure on the ball or help from others was not enough.
The reds were lousy in Naples. Control was out of reach for Jurgen Klopp’s men who were exposed and subsequently punished by a Napoli team that was ready for a fight.
The Italian side found spaces where there shouldn’t be, but gaps opened up instead and Liverpool’s defense was left exposed. The 4-1 score could have been much more.
After the match, Klopp admitted he “couldn’t recall a counter-pressure situation” from his side before Thiago’s introduction with 30 minutes to go, which says it all.
Robertson doubled down on that, saying the team was “too open” and there was no support once Napoli fended off the initial challenge, a theme not lost on fans.
“We were too open, we can’t come to a place like this and not be compact. We had chances, they had chances, they were the best team,” Robertson told BT Sport.
“When you are a team that pushes and you lose a challenge, you need one who follows and supports his teammate.
“Too many times they were turned and had wide open spaces to run towards us and send the ball behind and cause problems for our two center backs.
“Whether two-v-two, three-v-two. When you go out in a Champions League game, you can’t be that open. We have to go back to basics, we have to be compact.
“We created chances tonight, we did, but unfortunately we deserved this result, the way we were open. They found so many spaces, especially in the first part, that it seemed that they had an extra man, and that is not typical of us.
“You know the crowd is going to be up, the players are going to react to that and you have to be ready to fight and I don’t think we were close enough to our partner when they went to press the ball.
“I don’t think people got behind them fast enough and when you do that, unfortunately, they pick on you like we did.
“They beat us 4-1, we deserved it. We need to wake up and fast because we can’t act like that.”
Liverpool certainly have to wake up fast, Wolves visit on Saturday and then Ajax make the trip to Anfield just three days later.
