Liverpool players ‘depressed’ and Klopp frustrated by Matip injury
Jurgen KIopp has bemoaned the loss of Joel Matip to injury but concedes that West Brom fully deserved their draw on Sunday.
Liverpool were expected to win comfortably at Anfield but, after taking an early lead through Sadio Mane, the visitors scored a late equaliser through Semi Ajayi.
The result means that Liverpool missed the chance to go five points clear at the top of the table.
“The problem that I have is West Brom deserved the point – it’s our fault, but they deserved a point in the second half,” Klopp said.
“The first half was a really strange game, I don’t know the stats yet but it looks like it was 90/10 possession or something like this. I can’t remember a counter-attack.
“The first five minutes of the second half, they had more situations than they had in the entire first half.
“We should have won the game and now we are all ‘depressed’. The boys are more angry than anything else because they know that it was not perfect.
“We don’t live in dream-land and just win football matches because we want to win them: we have to work for it and we have to play for it and we have to finish the situations off and we have to pass in the right moments.
“In the end, we just drew a Premier League game, that can happen. It can happen against West Brom, they had a new manager and they played in the first half a system I didn’t see a lot in my life, a 6-4-0 or whatever. That’s completely fine, they have challenges to stay this disciplined for the rest of the season.”
The biggest setback from the game was the loss of Joel Matip, who limped off injured with a suspected groin problem just shy of the hour mark.
Matip had assisted Mane’s goal and adds to an already long list of injuries at centre back.
“Joel is injured and it’s not the first time that a centre-half is injured,” Klopp added.
“It’s of course not good, especially now as he was in a really good shape again, but we cannot change that. We just have to accept it and carry on.”
Liverpool v West Brom: Player Ratings, Match Stats, Player Stats