Jürgen Klopp: Mainz defeat will be an important lesson
Jürgen Klopp expects Liverpool's 4-0 defeat against Mainz on Sunday to act as a very important lesson for his team in the future.
A nine-game pre-season schedule came to a conclusion with a disappointing result at the Opel Arena, the home of the manager’s former club.
Afterwards, the German admitted his team should have done better but stressed that the Reds will learn from the experience to cope with difficult moments in the future.
Klopp told Liverpoolfc.com: “At half-time I told them that’s not how it should be, of course. It was hard for us today, 100 per cent.
“But that’s a very important lesson for us. If it’s hard – and there will be some hard moments this season – we have to trust our style of play, our philosophy and all of the things we usually do.
“[Such as] how we want to defend, final organisation and if you lose organisation in a moment, that can happen; find it back again and use it, not suffer under it.
“Of course, you could see the opponent today was much greedier than we were.
“We came here at 2am and it’s not perfect, but they are only things to explain the circumstances. We created a very tough situation. Of course, we should not lose 4-0 but it happened and we can work with it.”
Asked how ready the team is for next Sunday’s Premier League opener at Arsenal, Klopp continued: “It’s always a long way.
“Yesterday we could not stop smiling but that was not right, and today if we cannot stop being disappointed that’s not right either. It’s not between these two poles, if you want.
“We are in a good way, 100 per cent. And if we have a proper line-up, which we can have of course for next week, then we will be strong.
“Until now we did a really good job. But in moments like this today, we need to find other solutions than we found. This work will never stop.
“The line-up was a compromise, changing players and we flew a few players in this morning. That’s not optimum and not very good. But we always expect of ourselves that we have to do better and we should have done better.”