Jürgen Klopp was pleased with plenty of aspects of Liverpool’s performance in the goalless draw with Manchester United but rued the lack of calmness in the final third.
The Reds had 34 shots during the Premier League encounter at Anfield on Sunday but were unable to find a breakthrough and were forced to settle for a point. “Let me say, besides the result, I have a lot of positives about this game. You could say the decisive part, the scoring part, obviously was not there today. Maybe one or two were a bit unlucky and in other moments not calm enough, a bit too much in a rush,” said Klopp.
“But the start in the game was the best we had this season, the counter-pressing was the best we had this season, the intensity was outstanding and the amount of finishes is outstanding. But when you have this amount of finishes, you should have a few more on target – that’s another point which was obviously not great. And the goal, if we would have scored it whenever, it would have changed everything because they were obviously not here to lose somehow and they really wanted the result. They fought hard for it and credit to them.”
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On Man United’s defending, Klopp said: “The way United defended was with a lot of passion. The way we played disorganised them quite frequently but, in the end, we didn’t see that because then they were deep in the box and then they just throw themselves into the balls and the shots.
“If a team defends like that, there’s always a free player because rather two than one wants to block the ball, so it means somebody else is probably free. We didn’t see that and that’s why we drew the game.”
On the title race, Klopp said: “I couldn’t be interested, to be honest. I am happy we are in the area where we are and I don’t know why we open that discussion, this bottle, this early. It’s December, it’s the toughest period of the year. Everybody has to get through it somehow, everybody has to dig really deep to get through it. When you are in the cup competitions still then that makes life not easier. Arsenal have a week off, we play midweek against West Ham, which is not a friendly game obviously – it’s a quarter-final. That’s all tough.”