My first match leading Liverpool felt like walking into a storm. A real baptism by fire, as they say. Who would have thought we’d be beaten 3-0 at our own ground. Nottingham Forest was the team that did it, with their goals coming from Murillo, then Nicolo Savona, and finally Morgan Gibbs-White.
How bad was it? That’s a difficult thing to properly measure, but it was very bad of course. Losing at Anfield by such a scoreline, no matter the opponent, is a very, very, very bad result for sure. The unexpected part is how we began, the first half-hour looked promising from my view. I’m not sure I’ve seen us creating so much in a game’s opening maybe the entire season so far. Not converting those chances, then conceding goals like we did, makes for a very difficult cocktail to drink, honestly.
We also had our problems with injuries, which meant starting the game with a midfielder playing at right full-back. Both of our actual full-backs are currently injured. When you’re already 2-0 down, I don’t really think it’s necessary to bring on a defender. Normally you prefer, and this is what I do, bringing on players that can score a goal. We even tried a 3-3-4 formation late on, but nothing seemed to work for us.
About their first goal, people told me during the game he was in an onside position. So I wasn’t worried at all then. If you end up losing 3-0 to Forest, I should first of all be looking at myself and my team instead of that. It does show you how a single goal can completely change the momentum of a game, because before they scored I was just waiting for us to score. Afterwards, we hardly created any chances anymore, which is telling.
All of this is my responsibility, winning or losing falls on me. What I also see is the team, and our fans as well, they stayed to support until the very end. The players kept on trying, which is important. We’ve shown in other games we can dominate, but lately it’s been a mix of missed chances and conceding at the worst times.
Is there a way out of this? Of course there is a way out, especially with the quality of players we have here. I want to emphasize one more time on the fact that I’m responsible for the current losses. I can never come up with enough excuses to have the results we have, that is far from good enough and I’m responsible for that.
Do I think the players are nervous in front of goal? I don’t think so yet. Looking at the way we are finishing these chances, I don’t see a player that’s lacking confidence or is hesitating, really. Sometimes you just face good defending and a goalkeeper having a great day.
This defeat certainly casts a shadow, a stark reminder of the challenges here. We have to regroup quickly, that much is obvious. My honesty and taking responsibility, maybe that offers a little hope for the fans as we start this new era together. The next match becomes very crucial now.
