Wijnaldum: We have to keep believing
Georginio Wijnaldum has called on Liverpool to maintain the belief they can achieve a top-four finish this season despite Sunday's defeat against Crystal Palace.
The Reds took the lead in the Premier League clash at Anfield, courtesy of a sublime Philippe Coutinho free-kick midway through the first half.
But a brace from Christian Benteke, on his return to the club, secured maximum points for the Eagles and dented the position of Jürgen Klopp’s side in the battle for Champions League qualification.
Wijnaldum rued the manner of the goals conceded by his team, but insisted that Liverpool cannot allow the result to ruin the ambitions he still feels can be realised.
“[As long as] there’s a chance to qualify for the Champions League, we have to believe in it,” the Dutchman told Liverpoolfc.com.
“If you don’t believe you can reach it, it’s already done. We must have the confidence and stick together, helping each other out in moments like this.
“We will fight for the Champions League spot. That’s the only thing we can do now. We can’t change this game anymore, so we have to look forward.
“Against Watford we can change everything and get a good result. We have to look game by game and at the end of the season we will see what happens.”
Liverpool would have hoped to build on the brilliant free-kick curled in by Coutinho to open up a lead, but a Palace counter attack set up Benteke to level and the Belgian pounced from a corner to win it in the second half.
For Wijnaldum, the disappointment of losing the game from such a scenario was compounded by the fact that the Reds had dealt with the similar threat of West Bromwich Albion convincingly only a week previously.
He said: “I know we can defend corners, because we did it last week against West Brom, one of the best teams in the Premier League with set-pieces and we defended well. It’s something we can do. But we don’t do it every game.
“We were not sharp enough with the set-piece and they scored a goal.
“It’s difficult. They only had two moments. They didn’t have big chances in the game. We had the ball a lot but at the end, they had two moments and scored the goals. That makes it harder. It makes it hard to accept that we lost the game.
“We gave two moments away and that cost us the game. In the first half it was a counter attack, in the second half it was a set-piece. They were the two big moments for them and they took them.”