Ademola Lookman’s winner stunned the second-placed Reds to
keep them six points behind Manchester City in the title race.
Kasper Schmeichel saved Mohamed Salah’s first-half penalty
kick and Sadio Mane missed a golden chance after the break as the wasteful
visitors suffered just their second defeat of the season.
It ended a 10-match unbeaten run and they could be 12 points
adrift of Manchester City by the time they play third-placed Chelsea on Sunday.
Klopp said: “To top that, Chelsea and us play against each
other. It was not our plan to give Manchester City the chance to run away. If
we play like tonight, we cannot think about catching up with Manchester City.
“If we play our football and we can win games, we can see
how many points we can get and what that means.
“I don’t have a proper explanation for tonight – to find it
is my main concern, not Manchester City.
“We were not ourselves. We started OK, I didn’t like the
intensity even in the beginning but it was the start. Then we lost the rhythm
and never found it again.
“We forced it a little bit too early, instead of passing the
extra pass. We tried to change that at half-time but for some reason it didn’t
click.
“When they scored the goal it was clear we were under
pressure, we were pushing them but didn’t use the chances. They deserved the
three points.”
Leicester City responded to their 6-3 defeat at Manchester
City with a resilient and determined display to collect just their third league
clean sheet of the season.
This was in spite of a makeshift line-up with midfielders
Daniel Amartey and Wilfred Ndidi both playing out of position in central
defence.
Schmeichel kept them level in the first half when he saved
Salah’s 16th-minute penalty kick after the forward had been tripped by Ndidi.
Salah nodded the rebound onto the bar having missed his
first league penalty kick in four years.
The goalkeeper also turned Salah’s fierce close-range effort
over while Jordan Henderson and Diogo Jota shot off target.
Liverpool continued to push after the break and Mane should
have opened the scoring but he blazed over having been put through by Jota.
It proved costly as substitute Lookman snatched the points
on 59 minutes.
Just 178 seconds after replacing Hamza Choudhury, he jinked
past Joel Matip to drill inside Alisson Becker’s near post.
Liverpool failed to find a good enough response and Jota
headed wide and Virgil Van Dijk was denied by Schmeichel late on.
Victory allowed the Foxes to climb to ninth following the
win against manager Brendan Rodgers’ former club.
Rodgers said: “In the context of the game, on the back of
Sunday, the players put in a heroic performance. If you think about the
recovery time, the players were amazing how they coped with it.
“We had to be resilient, tough and defend for your life at
times but also show good moments of football.
“If you look at the weekend, even though the scoreline was 6-3,
two were penalty kicks and two were set-pieces. We let ourselves down with the
set-pieces so we needed to break the cycle.
“I just thought ‘let’s just go back to the basics again’ —-
a bit of an old-school structure, defenders go and defend, guys on the posts.
The two centre-halves were amazing.”
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