Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp admits his team are under pressure and lack confidence after they squandered victory in a 3-3 draw at home to Brighton.
Leandro Trossard completed a late hat-trick, having put his team 2-0 up inside 17 minutes due to sloppy defending, after Roberto Firmino’s brace and Adam Webster’s own goal seemed to have pulled the hosts out of the hole they had dug for themselves. .
But a fourth draw in seven Premier League outings did little for a side struggling to find their usual metronomic rhythm of pulling off win after win.
Asked if the lack of confidence was a concern, Klopp said: “Worrying, I’m not sure it’s the right word, but we can’t ignore the fact.
“But the Ajax game (their previous game 18 days ago in which they scored a winning goal in the 89th minute) didn’t give us any kind of rhythm.
“That’s something you normally get out of these situations. With the late goal we would have carried a lot of things into the next game, but unfortunately we didn’t play and since then that feeling has pretty much gone.
“We had moments of confidence today, Bobby for the second goal, you could see a lot of that, but the passing game was not good.
“We passed balls everywhere, which we can only explain by saying that we did not have confidence at that moment, because of how the game started.
“We’re under pressure, we don’t ignore that, we don’t increase it every day, but it’s there.”
Klopp agreed with the assessment that some of Liverpool’s defence, particularly in the first half hour, was chaotic.
His team, nine of which could be considered starters, seemed so disjointed and Brighton, despite not having played for a month and under the leadership of a new manager following Graham Potter’s departure to Chelsea, made the most of it.
“If we are 100 percent honest, it is not the first time. It is a sign that the level of confidence is now not extraordinarily high,” Klopp said.
“In our situation, if you get your confidence back, you want to build on it and increase it, and it was obvious that the first goal, especially, and then the second goal didn’t help that.
“If you watch football long enough, you remember the games here where we had situations years ago when we were only a goal up and it happened quite often that everyone was about to have a heart attack because we just weren’t convincing in those. moments.
“It reminded me a little bit of that today. I can’t say that he was 100% convinced that we wouldn’t concede a goal when we were 3-2 up.
“We should defend the three goals better, there is no doubt about that, but in different areas, not just at the last moment.
“3-3 feels like a loss even if it’s not, and we have to fight this.”
It was almost a dream debut for new Seagulls boss Roberto De Zerbi after Trossard scored two in 17 minutes.
“I am very happy for the game. Very proud. We played a very good match,” he said.
“We had the chance to score more. I know it’s my first game in the Premier League, but I know Anfield, I know the difficulties of this stadium.
