Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp said his side’s inability to finish “made life not easy” in their 1-1 draw with Southampton. Klopp also said the result is “not exactly what they wanted” but also “not the end of the world” when it comes to meeting their ultimate goals for the season.
Getting one point, instead of three, obviously makes the race for the top four much more tight down the stretch. The Reds remain in third place, one ahead of fourth place Manchester City (who have a game in hand on Liverpool) and five ahead of Manchester United (who also have a game in hand on Liverpool).
However, United’s desire to focus completely on UEFA Europa League, as their route back into Champions League led to their lack of ambitious showing at The Emirates today. Arsenal beat United 2-0 and now find themselves thrust back into the race for a top four finish. Arsenal, who could have been finished off by the Red Devils today, are now seven points behind Liverpool, but have two games in hand on the men led by Jurgen Klopp.
“A lot of people might say that everybody will now play here like this, but it will not be like this and if it is, we have solutions,” Klopp said of today’s result.
“We had them today, but you need to score at one moment and then they’re open and then we can do other things. They were very disciplined and very deep; we defended their counter-attacks much better than we did against Crystal Palace, for example.”
“In the end, it’s all about finishing or scoring one and we couldn’t do this. It made life not easy in the game. We tried until the end, but today was one of those days.”
“Now we have only one point more, we wanted to have three points more, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not exactly what we wanted and we are really disappointed about this, as you can imagine, but we will keep on going.”
Jurgen Klopp and his side have just two games remaining. They’ll travel to West Ham United next Sunday, and then host Middlesbrough in the season finale on May 21st.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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