Klopp Talk: Community Shield Defeat a “Really Good Performance”

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Positives to take despite loss

Liverpool lost a sort-of trophy and that never feels great. Nonetheless, Liverpool did play some good football against Man City. In the second half, particularly, we were comfortably the dominant team and could have easily won the game. Jürgen Klopp broadly agreed.

“Wow, it was a really good performance, a powerful one in the second half”, BBC Sport report Klopp as saying.

“Both teams had a similar pre-season, I spoke to Kevin de Bruyne after the game and we both said we don’t really know where we are yet.

”The least we deserved was the equaliser, one save decided it and I cannot be disappointed today. The performance was much more important today than a win. We know we are still here, we can still play proper football.

”In the first half we could have adjusted better, but we had chances as well. In the second half we changed a few things, we wanted it and in the end it was a little bit lucky. Congratulations to City.”

All of this feels like a fairly reasonable and honest assessment of where Liverpool are right now. It has been a strange preseason. Results haven’t been great and performances have felt disjointed, with players returning late certainly not helping that.

And Liverpool looked legitimately very good against City today, generating more than twice as many shots as Pep Guardiola’s side. Neither team looked close to full sharpness, and you’d expect to see a much stronger performance across the pitch when the two teams next play each other in November. But this was an afternoon of real positives for Liverpool, with a sense that the side is, after all, in a good way.

As Klopp has complained about, Liverpool start the Premier League campaign on Friday night. Expect to see a more cohesive performance than this one, but there are positives to take into it.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com