Jurgen Klopp Believes Lack of Killer Instinct Cost Liverpool Two Points Against Arsenal

​Liverpool dropped two points against Arsenal in their race for the Premier League title after they drew 1-1 against the Gunners on Saturday evening.

Jürgen Klopp's side were not at their scintillating best against the Gunners but took a somewhat undeserved 1-0 lead in the second half through James Milner. However, Arsenal struck back in the last ten minutes as Alexandre Lacazette's fine strike pegged Liverpool back. 

 

Speaking about the game as a whole, Klopp said this to Sky Sports: "It was intense. Very intense. And it was clear Arsenal are in a very good moment so I thought our problem was we made life a bit too easy for them in the first half."

 

He added: "Formation-wise I wasn't happy, how compact we were, stuff like that. When we had the ball it was good, we were in behind. With the start they had it was like 'oh, Arsenal are there'. But first attack we had everybody knew, 'OK, they're not too bad as well.'"

 

Virgil Van Dijk was surprisingly guilty of missing some good chances for the away side and the Dutchman's manager responded by saying: "Virgil [Van Dijk] said immediately after the game to me, 'I should have had a hat-trick' and he has not even one. That's a shame."

 

Klopp believes that Liverpool's tactical changes in the second half resulted in an improved performance: "Second half we changed formation a bit and it helped us. We scored a really nice goal, had super counter-attacks, played good football in a lot of moments.

 

 

"But of course - and Arsenal did this already a few times this year, they brought pretty much all their strikers. I was actually waiting for Van Persie and Bergkamp to come on!

"And because first half we were not compact enough, the three in midfield had to do too much and one time we don't close the half space they play the ball through and they can score the goal. That's it.

"It's not nice but a point at Arsenal will be absolutely a good result so we take that and carry on."

Despite his apparent satisfaction with the 1-1 draw, Klopp expressed his regrets that his side could not convert their chances during the game: "We scored, we created chances, we had the biggest chances in the game and we had empty goals and didn't use it. That's not too cool and if you want to win at Arsenal you should use these kind of chances.

 

 

"I know they had chances as well, of course, but I think we had the bigger ones."

 

Liverpool next face Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League before a home fixture against Fulham in the Premier League. Klopp will fully expect his side to win both of these games and will hope that victory against Fulham will close the gap at the top of the table with Manchester City facing Manchester United on the same weekend. 

Source : 90min