An angry person Following Liverpool’s 4-1 thrashing of Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium, Jürgen Klopp deemed their dismal second-half performance “unacceptable.”
Mohamed Salah’s first-half goal for the Reds gave them the advantage, but City quickly fought back with a clever equalizer from Julian Alvarez. At halftime, the hosts took a two-goal lead with two quick goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan. Jack Grealish then sealed the victory, pulling City to within five points of Premier League leader Arsenal.
“We scored a fantastic goal and had another exciting moment, but we gave up. Although it was unfortunate that the ball managed to slip through [Andy] Robertson’s legs and they managed to win it, coming out after the break and giving up two goals in rapid succession destroyed everything. It’s hard to accept the goals we gave up because neither of them had a challenge from us.
That is very unacceptable. After that, the city was in total charge, and we were free to let them do whatever they pleased. We were fortunate that they were not acting selfishly at the time. It’s a relief that they only added one extra goal, so thank you. It could have turned out otherwise, which is extremely bad news for us. Even though we had some good moments, the way we lost everything overall was unsatisfactory.
“It’s challenging to win here when you’re down 3-1, but there wasn’t anything else; four or five players played reasonably well, and the others were somewhere else. After three days, we play again against a formidable opponent. We have to use what we observed today since we see it more frequently now, therefore tomorrow is a huge day for us.”
Cody Gakpo of the Reds, whose team is hoping to finish in the top four and go to the Champions League, also acknowledged: “That says for itself that we are dissatisfied. Everyone gets irritated when we don’t do what we know we can do and lose the game.
“I believe we gave up two goals very quickly in the second half, and it will be challenging to recover from that. We must examine that to determine how we might make it better. City is a strong team, but I think we occasionally demonstrated that we are also a really powerful team. However, we must maintain our consistency.”
The team’s performance was among the greatest in Pep Guardiola’s seven-year managerial career, according to the City boss.
Even though we gave up a goal, Guardiola gushed to BT Sport, “Minute One to Minute 93 was a perfect performance.” “They [Liverpool] always pose a threat in transition, but we played incredibly well—it was among my top seven-year performances.”