Liverpool suffered yet another loss at home in the Premier League, this time going down to Brighton and Hove Albion on Wednesday.
The hosts lost the game 1-0 as they could manage only one shot on target during the 90 minutes and on the other hand, the Seagulls had as many as four attempts on goal during that same period.
The Liverpool players looked devoid of ideas during the match and according to manager Jurgen Klopp, it’s the mental fatigue which slowed them down on the pitch and cost them three points.
The manager said after the match, as per Liverpool’s official website: “I see Brighton quite frequently.
“They were good. So they had a few counter-attacks when we tried really hard, that’s when Caoimhin was outstanding and kept us in the game. Definitely if we are 1-0 up they don’t have these counter-attacks, that’s clear.
“They scored a goal, they had a clear idea – so it’s passing the ball or chipping the ball to Burn and go from there. We had our moments. Again, the best way to defend against Brighton is to keep the ball and for keeping the ball you have to pass the ball from A to B – and A should be Liverpool and B should be Liverpool.
“Very often B was Brighton because we pass the ball [to] their feet. That helped Brighton definitely. But I’m not surprised about their performance at all.
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“First and foremost, Brighton won the game and rightly so, [it was] deserved. They were fresher than us tonight and did more good things than we did.
“We lost too many easy balls. The best way to defend Brighton is to keep the ball, to play football yourself and when we did that, we had control at least but didn’t create a lot. I said now plenty of times in all the interviews outside, for me the team looked tonight – and it’s long ago we looked like this – fatigued, mentally fatigued and that leads to not the best legs as well.
“It was a tough week and today we were not fresh enough, that means then [not] good enough to break the formation of Brighton. In the end, they scored a goal, had other chances, we kind of as well, but they scored and that’s why they deserved to win.”
The Liverpool players had a clear idea of how Brighton were going to play at Anfield but still, they failed to break them down. And this is great news for Manchester City since Pep Guardiola’s side face the Reds this coming weekend.
City are currently on top of the league table – seven points ahead of Klopp’s side with one game in hand. So if the Citizens can manage to squeeze out a victory on Sunday then we are most certainly going to have a new Premier League champion in the month of May.
Yes, the Anfield outfit have a number of big defensive players out injured but it’s the forward players who are actually looking out of sync and this hugely benefiting opposition defenders.
Players like Firmino, Origi and Salah are only shining in patches this season which frankly, is not good enough to defend their Premier League status during such an open title battle.
