Jurgen Klopp, the manager of Liverpool, says that his underperforming team’s mindset is not the problem.
While their hold on the Carabao Cup is over, their defence of the FA Cup continues at Brighton on Sunday. Their six Premier League losses are four more than they experienced in the entire previous season.
The players have the potential to demonstrate that they have learned from that experience and can build on the success of two straight clean sheets by going back to the location of what Klopp characterised as the worst performance of his managerial career just a fortnight ago.
It’s not like they deliberately performed poorly, he remarked, so if attitude were the issue, it would be fairly simple.
“It never happened. That is why I cannot sit here and say, ‘I told them everything, they just can’t do it’.
“There is no issue with attitude. It is the recognition of the need.
“For instance, a player might look at his running statistics following a game and claim that he ran precisely the same. However, the act of initially defending is input.
“The Brighton game was helpful for bringing this information to the attention of 100,000,000% everyone. The low point was when I was told, “OK, that is not acceptable.”
“Returning there requires a lot of effort. Everyone could have done it if it had been simple.
When considering the starting lineup, “I truly observed real steps in the correct way, and that’s vital and must be my first worry.
Liverpool is the FA Cup champion after defeating Chelsea at Wembley in May, but with the recent troubles they have had and the battles they have had to win against Wolves, it has almost been forgotten.
Klopp doesn’t think that has any bearing, though.
“I don’t think being cup holders gives us a significant competitive edge. We begin from scratch,” he continued.
We know how awesome the event is if you make it to the final, so if you want, that’s helpful.
The performance of 18-year-old Stefan Bajcetic was one of the games’ recent highlights.
Alongside Thiago Alcantara and Naby Keita, the adolescent has started back-to-back games and this week signed a new deal through 2027.
“Aggression, but good aggression — it’s not that he kicks players — is something we didn’t demonstrate frequently enough in the recent games.
In the middle of the park, “He is a good footballer on top of that, so that’s obviously quite essential.”
