Losing to Leicester City, a team in danger of relegation, still reeling from the recent sacking of their manager, is such a Liverpool thing to do. Liverpool were obviously heavy favorites heading into their 3-1 loss to Leicester; a defeat that was even more lopsided than it sounds.
Now watch Liverpool beat Arsenal this weekend, draw or lose to Burnley the next week, and defeat Manchester City the following week. This four week stretch, should it actually play out that way, would be the pattern of behavior Liverpool observers have come quite familiar with. The Leicester loss was an upset to be sure, but it’s almost not even really an upset at all when you think about it.
Getting trounced tonight by a lower table side is indeed “pulling a Liverpool.”
After the match, Liverpool Manager Jurgen Klopp described what today’s disaster looked like to him.
“It was not good enough in the beginning, it was not good enough in the middle and it was not good enough in the end,” Klopp siad in his postgame news conference.
“I think it was 100 percent clear what happens here tonight from the Leicester side — back to the roots, the line up was clear. It was clear how emotional the game will be because if Leicester doesn’t show emotion tonight then that would have been really strange.
“It was not that intense but we were not even ready for this. We tried to be absolutely ready for the first second but, obviously, we tried not enough, with the wrong tools or whatever. The first goal looked like a friendly game — a player down, a throw in, a header and one pass.”
You have heard of the expression “in midseason form” to describe superb performances. Well, this was indeed preseason form, just like Jurgen Klopp described.
“For us, it’s very important to say we cannot blame anybody else for this performance — it’s only our responsibility. The job we have to do is react again on it and react and react and react because what happened tonight has happened too often this season already.”
“Everybody who follows us the whole year knows how good we can be, so that makes even worse to accept.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and Bold, contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication, CGTN America, WGN CLTV News and KOZN.
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