Jurgen Klopp Says He Could Have Defended Better 'In My Trainers' Than Liverpool

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp pulled no punches in his assessment of his side's defending after they went down 4-1 to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday and said he would have fared better than his players "in my trainers."

He told Sky Sports (h/t the Mirror's Alex Smith):

"The whole game the whole result was all our fault—Tottenham was good, they needed to be good, but we made it much too easy for them.

"The first goal was a little throw in and we are not really there. It was just really bad, bad, bad defending.

"If I am involved in this situation on the pitch, Harry [Kane] cannot get the ball. I could have been out there in my trainers and they wouldn’t have scored."

Dejan Lovren was at fault for the first two goals. He reacted slowly to Kieran Trippier's ball over his head to allow Kane to steal in and open the scoring inside four minutes and missed Hugo Lloris' long clearance to Kane for the second goal eight minutes later, giving the striker the time and space to pick out Heung-Min Son.

The Independent's Miguel Delaney summarised the early exchanges of the match, while the Guardian's Barney Ronay was among many to single out Lovren:

Klopp made the decision to take off the Croatian after just 31 minutes, a move that was welcomed by the travelling Liverpool support, per football writer Oliver Bond:

Premier League winner and pundit Peter Schmeichel criticised the German's course of action, though. Per Daniel Zeqiri of the Daily Telegraph, he said: "It's very important to underline that he never said anything to him, and he's killed that player. What he's done now is put all of the responsibility on to Lovren. He will now be in the headlines for this, and that's really unfair. It should be the manager."

It was a woeful outing for the Croatia international, but if his confidence were already low heading into the game, it must surely now be rock bottom.

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The change also did little to shore up the Reds, who conceded a third at the end of the first half and a fourth in the second after Simon Mignolet flapped at a free-kick and the Reds failed to clear their lines.

In his capacity as a commentator for Sky Sports, Gary Neville likened the repetition of Liverpool's errors to "Groundhog Day."

He continued: "You don't mind players making mistakes, but when it's the same players making the same mistakes in different seasons, you think something's got to change."

The former Manchester United star added that at Old Trafford, "heads would roll" if such mistakes were made so frequently.

It's clear the Reds need new personnel at the back, with Sunday only serving to highlight their failure to strengthen that area in the summer.

However, it's equally apparent that Liverpool need better defensive coaching, too.

Newcastle United have shown this season that a defence can become greater than the sum of its parts with the right mentoring—only the top three have conceded fewer than their eight goals—so there's no reason the Reds cannot coax better performances from their players, even if they are not at the level Liverpool need them to be.

Their title challenge already appears to be over given they are 12 points behind league leaders Manchester City, and they will face a difficult battle to finish in the top four. If they can't improve at the back, a top-four finish will be even more unlikely.