Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp admits they were rattled by Nottingham Forest’s long throw-ins on Saturday.
The Reds won narrowly 3-2 against relegation-threatened Forest.
Klopp said: “When the ball was out, then the game really started – the throw-ins created a proper mess for us. You can prepare a lot in football – and this game was now the preparation for us for the future – but for this kind of thing, obviously we were not prepared well enough. We knew about the threat: when Niakhate has the ball and throws it into the box. The first ball we could have defended better, I think Ibou was a bit too much in a fight with whoever was around him, but how we deal with the second, third and fourth ball was not even close to being good enough because they won all of them and put it always back into the area and that, in the end, caused massive problems.
“I think especially the second goal they scored… as a player who is not directly involved, you need to read the situation better because everybody is there, there is one who fights for the ball and all the rest has to pick up where is the next potential threat. There, that was not good enough. We scored our goals as well from set-pieces, different set-pieces, so [it was a] strange game.
“A lot of possession for us. I still don’t have the stats from the second half, but first half I think it was 86 per cent or something, which is a really strange number. That makes life difficult, you have to be patient and I know for the people the first half is not a half where you think football is a fantastic game, but it is hard work and that is what we had to do – and the boys did that. Then scoring the first one is obviously very helpful, then we got the lesson in throw-ins starting then. They scored their first, reacting then on that was good – it was good again what we did.
“Then reacting in the second time again – all goals were super-smart, good crosses, good finishes, so that was all good. Then we should have controlled it a bit better.
“In most moments we controlled it but in these little moments they just needed a throw-in and everything ended in chaos again and that made life really difficult. We came through it and I am happy, really happy, because we showed a lot of things I wanted to see. It was obviously a different game to the Leeds game because you need to score to change their way and you need to keep the lead. If we are 1-0 up and can score a second one, that’s the moment the game changes – apart from that there is no chance the game changes at all. They sit deep, they wait for their chance and they know if the ball passes the sideline then they will be dangerous. That’s it.”
