Jurgen Klopp: Liverpool’s performance in loss ‘just not good enough’

Jurgen Klopp declared Liverpool's performance in the shock 1-0 defeat at Swansea City on Monday as simply 'not good enough.'

Liverpool's 18-game unbeaten run in all competitions ended at the hands of the Premier League's 20th-placed side.

Alfie Mawson's 41st-minute goal gave Swansea a vital three points in their battle for survival and handed Liverpool their first loss in exactly three months.

'I'm more frustrated about the performance than about the result,' Klopp told a news conference. 'The result is always a result of the performance.

'We were just not good enough tonight, especially in the first half. We didn't play what we wanted to play.

'It's not Swansea's job to play fantastic football. They needed to fight and we wanted to fight as well. Of course, we had the ball much more often and we need to have a plan for that. We had a plan — how you hopefully saw in the second half when he went back to what we wanted to do in the beginning.

'The stadium was there and their confidence grew and ours wasn't really there. With each minute, the pressure increases and that's the situation. We had chances, even in the first half.

'I didn't expect tonight that we play our best football, but of course you have to do the right things in the right moment to deserve to win a game like this tonight. How I felt, we didn't deserve it.'

Coming into the Swansea game on the back of the pulsating win that ended Manchester City's unbeaten run in the Premier League, Klopp insists there was no complacency from his players in the build-up to the trip to South Wales.

'We spoke about it before,' he added. 'We knew that there are a lot of challenges playing against top of the table and bottom of the table.

'Everybody is talking very positive, fantastic football football, the training week was outstanding — another little trap. We know about that.

'I have to watch the game back and maybe I will know a little bit more about it. But I had not one second this feeling.

'Swansea knew that to win this game today they needed our help and, unfortunately, we helped them.'

Meanwhile, Carlos Carvalhal used a racing-car analogy to praise the tactical discipline of his Swansea players as they restricted Liverpool to just four shots on target from their 72 percent of possession.

Speaking at his postmatch news conference, the Portuguese manager said: 'I talked with my players and I said: 'This is a really, really strong team. They are like a Formula 1 [car]. But a Formula 1 at 4 o'clock in London traffic will be difficult to speed.

'We must try to make things very difficult for them and put them in the traffic of London and not open the roads like in Formula 1. If they have the space to play then we will lose 3-0 or 4-0. My players did the plan absolutely right.'

Source: www.espnfc.com