ReactionJürgen Klopp press conference: Verdict on Merseyside derby defeat

The Reds were beaten at Goodison Park on Wednesday night as goals in either half from Jarrad Branthwaite and Dominic Calvert-Lewin settled the contest.

See Klopp’s reaction to the Premier League defeat for his team below.

On his thoughts about the game…

No good thoughts at all. Very disappointed, frustrated obviously. I had now obviously a few interviews and I would say you can sum up: it was not good enough. We played the game, or let it happen, the game Everton wanted. They scored two goals from set-pieces. The first one we defended somehow three times but in the end we put it on a plate and I don’t think Branthwaite scored it, he didn’t even hit the ball properly but the ball rolls over the line. After that we had our best period, we really put them under pressure, we created big chances and didn’t score. Going like that in half-time, each situation we missed gave Everton kind of momentum even more and took away from us. We never had it, but it didn’t help.

And then second half, it was as well not good enough, without the real pressure phase I would say we had to the end of the first half. Then you concede the second goal. I think everybody who is with Everton saw that goal already 20 times or something like that, that’s their routine. Everybody knows they put the ball there. In the end, the player is anyway completely free. I didn’t see it back but I’m pretty sure we could have defended that better. It’s 2-0, atmosphere here, we played like we played, obviously it was not the most inspired performance of all time.

I really feel for the people, I’m really sorry for that obviously. People told me so often about my great record [in derbies], before the derby especially you hear, ‘But you never win here’. But we never lost and that feels really different. I really apologise for that, it was unnecessary but it happened. We cannot change it anymore. We have to recover because the quickest of all turnarounds is waiting for us. You can imagine that will be now a challenge obviously mentally and physically. Physically, it was clear. If you win a game then the mental turnaround is obviously not a massive problem, but we have now both things to do. And probably West Ham is waiting and rubbing their hands and hoping that we come there on one leg. But I will try absolutely everything to make sure we are much more ourselves than we were tonight.

• Read our match report from Goodison Park here

On how he sees the picture of the title race now…

I understand it, it’s part of the business, but I don’t know why I have to answer this question – obviously you can read the table. So, should I say now we are still fully in? We need a crisis at [Manchester] City and Arsenal, and need to win football games, because if they start now losing all the games and we do what we did tonight, nothing changed. And we are not safe in the Champions League as well so we should just play better football.

You can see we are in a rush in front of the goal, you can see that. It’s long ago but I blame a little bit the [Manchester] United game for it; that many chances and you play really good but you don’t get anything for it. That’s really bad. Since then, we create but we don’t score often enough and that doesn’t help. It’s not like in a situation like that you don’t score and then just [think], ‘Ah, forget it, who cares?’ You cannot act like you scored 15 goals in the last two games or whatever. You can see that and that’s a problem. It’s always like this: you have to fight through these periods, it was never different. People asked me already about mentality. The mentality has different aspects. It’s not a problem of attitude. The boys want; nobody is doing anything like that on purpose. It’s my job to bring them into a situation that they feel confident to do it. With that part, I’m responsible for everything that happened tonight, so it’s not that I feel great. But that’s the most tricky part of football obviously, and in the moment it didn’t work out and now we have to keep trying.

On the reasons for Liverpool’s recent form...

There are different aspects, definitely. Players who played all the games are not that fresh, but that is for other teams the same. I don’t want to use that as an excuse, really – as long as the boys are fit, not injured, that helps. Let me say, Gabriel and [William] Saliba played all the games for Arsenal. Did they play a little bit less than us? I don’t even know 100 per cent – but they played a lot of games as well. Coming back from injury obviously is then slightly different, because of the intensity – the game is not waiting for you. Up front it is a super-intense job to do, always high sprint, always go, go, go and that we cannot change [players] there is difficult.

I know we had Dannsy [Jayden Danns] on the bench, but we didn’t know we had to bring him in [to the squad] because of the two situations – with Diogo [Jota] we only learned two days ago [about his injury] and with Cody [Gakpo] actually today really. So, that’s now not a game for an 18-year-old boy and [James] Tarkowski and Branthwaite kill you in these situations and it doesn’t help. So, a lot of things came together [and] it’s not great timing, I admit that. I would prefer to be sitting here, winning 4-0, flying and can’t wait for the next game. How I said, the job is to win football games and the more you win, the more successful you are. In the moment, we didn’t win enough to get anything out of the season yet so we should better start winning again.