“They were better than us in all aspects of football in the first half. I would say like last season: I saw a lot of similarities between last season and this one, with one main difference – after we suffered a lot in the first 25 minutes, we then scored after a set piece. It was a game changer. They continued to outplay us for the whole 90 minutes, but that goal gave us the energy to continue to defend well. They didn’t create that many chances last season. I think they created more today, but you can’t say it was moment after moment, but this time they were much more effective with the moments they had. The first goal – I don’t think it was a big moment, it’s just quality. The third goal is also not such a big moment, but again quality. The second goal is a standard.
The mood in the locker room after the game? Of course, everyone is disappointed. It’s been a very good week with wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid, but just in case you thought you’ve played against two strong opponents, Man City come up next, also at the Etihad. It is difficult for any team, including us. They were much better than us in the first half.
VAR decision to disallow Van Dijk’s 1-0 goal? I would like to stress that the 2-0 half-time scoreline was a fair reflection of how the game played out. But I was also on the other side – when my team played much better than the other, we were leading 1:0, did not score the second, and then the opponent gets a standard, it becomes 1:1, and everything changes dramatically. This happens in football. I won’t say that it was obvious to me that the decision to disallow the goal was wrong, but I also won’t say that we lost because of it. Because even at 1-1, if City had continued to play the way they did, we would have still struggled in the second half.
But I always felt that if we had managed to keep it 1-0 at half-time, we could have made some adjustments – which we definitely needed because we were constantly one or two players short in midfield and Doku and Nico O’Reilly were giving us a lot of problems. Then 1-1 would have been a huge gift for us at half-time because I think the second half was a completely different game. But when you lose 0-2 and then 0-3, it doesn’t reflect how things could have gone if it was 1-1.
The percentage of single combats won by “Liverpool”? It’s easy for players to win duels when the game plan and tactics work – as they did against Villa and Real Madrid. But now it was very difficult for us because they started so many players in the center of the field and it was difficult for our players to make the right decisions. So I don’t think it’s a matter of not wanting to fight – it’s just that they had to run a lot because City’s players were much better at handling the ball than us, and sometimes our players just didn’t have time.
First of all I always look at our game plan and their game plan and not blame my players because in the second half when we did better you could see they started to win a lot more tackles and we were able to win the ball a few times – it didn’t lead to our goal but in that part of the second half we definitely deserved to score.
Five defeats in the championship and the assessment of the fight for the title? Yes, it feels like too much and the last thing I should be talking about right now is a title fight. First, we need to focus on getting results – one after the other, over and over again – before we even think about it. The reality is that we are currently in eighth place. One team is quite far ahead, although City are just four points behind Arsenal. The rest are located quite close. I said many times last season – even when we were leading at the start – that the best way to judge the standings is of course after 38 games, but the next best option is after 19 when everyone has played the same opponents.
And our first goal is simply to get results. The last thing to focus on right now is the title fight. We could do that last season, but not the two seasons before that. We need to add, and that’s obvious.”
Source: sport.ua