Jurgen Klopp has lamented the Liverpool defence’s lack of ‘awareness’ during their 4-3 defeat to Bayern Munich on Wednesday.
The Reds have shipped a worrying number of goals during pre-season thus far, with the four shipped against Bayern taking the tally to 12 in their last four friendlies.
Defensive concerns were common last season for Liverpool, who conceded 47 goals in 38 league games, and Klopp warned his team that they cannot afford to allow that trend to continue.
Before the Bayern friendly, Klopp admitted: “I’ve tried to make really clear our defending has to be at a completely different level to last season. We had better do that or we will have real problems.”
That level was not on show during the latest game against the Bundesliga champions, who profited from a number of sloppy decisions from Liverpool’s defence to become the second side to score four against them this summer.
Klopp reflected: “The first goal we concede, Trent [Alexander-Arnold] and Joel [Matip] have to react better. This pass, I don’t think it is [able] to avoid, to be 100% honest. We cannot always be there and block all balls, sometimes balls will fly towards our last line. It was just a little doubt in between, but both stand on both feet – I am not sure exactly when it was, 30 minutes when they scored the first goal? – so we felt the intensity properly then, like humans are.
“I think it was a similar time [in the] second half, between Joey [Gomez] and Ibou [Konate]. It’s nothing about speed or whatever, it is just about awareness – check the situation. In football there are no breaks. When you are really tired, that’s the thing you hate the most: there are no breaks.
“Apart from that, how I said, I saw a lot of good individual performances, I think really encouraging, really positive, and we can work with that, that’s it.”
Klopp will be hoping that reinforcements prior to the start of the 2023/24 season will help shore up the team in the defensive third. One signing that could help may be Romeo Lavia of Southampton, with the Reds already making two bids for the player, who can player as a defensive midfielder in front of the backline.