Andy Robertson was quick to acknowledge Liverpool were “miles too open” at Napoli in a “deserved” defeat, pointing to the fact that was not enough pressure on the ball or help from others.
The Reds were dismal in Naples. Control was far out of reach for Jurgen Klopp‘s men who were exposed and subsequently punished by a Napoli team that were up for the fight.
The Italian side found space where there shouldn’t have been any, but instead there were gaping holes and Liverpool’s defence was exposed. The 4-1 scoreline could have been a lot more.
After the match, Klopp conceded he “couldn’t remember one counter-pressing situation” from his side before Thiago‘s introduction with 30 minutes left, which says it all.
Robertson doubled down on that, saying the team were “mile too open” and there was no support once the initial challenge was evaded by Napoli, a theme not missed by supporters.
“We were miles too open, can’t come to a place like this and not be compact. We had chances, they had chances – they were the miles better team,” Robertson told BT Sport.
“When you’re a team that presses and you miss one challenge, you need one to follow it up and back his mate up.
“Too many times they got turned and they had big open spaces to run at us and send the ball in behind and cause our two centre-backs problems.
“Whether it was two-v-twos, three-v-twos. When you come away in a Champions League game, you can’t be wide open like that. We have to get back to basics, you have to be compact.
“We created chances tonight, we did, but, unfortunately, we deserved this result, the way we were wide open. They found so many spaces, especially in the first half, it felt as if they had an extra man, and that’s not like us.
“You know the crowd are going to be up, the players are going to react to that and you have to be ready to fight and I don’t think we were close enough to our mate when they went to press the ball.
“I don’t think people were backing them up quick enough and when you do that, unfortunately, you get picked off like we did.
“We’ve been beat 4-1, we deserved it. We need to wake up and quickly because we can’t perform like that.”
Liverpool certainly have to wake up quickly, Wolves visit on Saturday and then Ajax make the trip to Anfield just three days later.
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