Ralph Hazenhuttle was unhappy with Liverpool’s victory over Southampton on Tuesday night, as he admitted his disappointment with his own team’s defense.
Joel Matip scored with a header from a corner to win the Reds 2-1 after Takumi Minamino canceled Nathan Redmond’s stunning opening. Jurgen Klopp has made nine changes to his team, which came out on the field of St. Mary, after the victory in Saturday’s FA Cup final over Chelsea, as the head of the Saints was not surprised by the elected holder of XI.
And while he praised the strength of the Liverpool team, he admitted that his team played a “terrible” game against the Reds and is to blame for the winning goal.
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“I think we played against a good team that made a lot of changes, but there is still a lot of quality in the beginning,” he told reporters after the last referee signal. “You could see it. Honestly, I would do the same (I made a lot of changes).
“Jürgen is convinced of these players. They have real quality. He is still a team of great quality. They came with this team to the FA Cup final. They play very often with this team, so we know they are good.
“We took a lot of risks with the ball today, sometimes it looked a little scary, to be honest. We tried to defend ourselves against the ball in different ways. Deeper, because in recent weeks we have been struggling with goals. Easy goals and they were too open.
“It worked well, but not perfectly, otherwise we would not have conceded a goal. We allow the first goal when we are all behind the ball, in the penalty area and we can’t stop Taki from scoring. They played it pretty well, I must say. In these moments you can see that Firmino is very strong in these areas and Taki made a good deep run. “
“In the second half we sometimes tried to surprise them with 4-2-2-2. Sometimes we pressed higher, but it was immediately obvious that it was not perfect and they played across the lines. “
He continued: “Then you go deeper again and try to keep the game open for as long as possible, but you allow a very easy second goal. You can clear the ball on a nearby beam.
“The plan is to clear the ball on the first beam, that’s the plan. If he clears it in the first post, we don’t need to talk about it.
“We threw the ball to a player who then hit it with his head from 12 yards, from the back of our head, over our goalkeeper and towards the goal. I can’t blame the goalkeeper.
“The only really disappointing thing for me tonight is that we conceded such a goal. We know that we are not the highest, but the team we played today is also not the highest. They have two good central defenders coming, but it was too easy as we admitted. “
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