On the result and Liverpool’s performance…
They were, in every aspect of football, better [than us in] the first half. I would say like last season; I saw a lot of similarities between last season and this season with one main difference in that after we struggled in the first 25 minutes a lot we scored a set-piece. That changed the game. They kept on outplaying us for 90 minutes but it did help us to get some energy to keep defending well. Last season, they didn’t create that many chances. I think today they created more, but it wasn’t that they had chance after chance after chance, but this time they were much more effective with the chances they had. First goal, I don’t think it’s a big chance, I think it’s also quality. Third goal, it’s not a big chance but it is quality. Second goal, set-piece.
On the mood in the dressing room after the game…
Of course, everyone is disappointed. It was a very good start to the week, winning against [Aston] Villa and Real Madrid, but if you thought you already faced two strong opponents then Man City comes across, away at the Etihad. That is, for every team, difficult, including for us. They were by far the much better side in the first half.
On the VAR decision to rule out Van Dijk’s header with the scoreline at 1-0…
I would like to emphasise the fact that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went. But I have been on the opposite side, that my team was much better than the other team, we were 1-0 up and then maybe not scoring the second one and the other team gets a set-piece, it’s 1-1 and then all of a sudden things change. So, this can happen in football. It’s not to say for me it was clear and obvious for me that it was the wrong decision that this goal was not allowed, but I will not say that because of that we’ve lost the game because after 1-1, if City just kept on playing like they did then we would have struggled in the second half as well.
But, I constantly felt if we were managing to keep maybe 1-0 down until half-time, we can maybe adjust a few things, which was definitely necessary because we were constantly coming one or two players short in the midfield because Doku and [Nico] O’Reilly gave us a lot of problems with the two of them. Then 1-1 would have been the biggest gift we could get at half-time because, in my opinion, the second half was a different game, but being 2-0 down and later 3-0 down that maybe doesn’t give a good reflection of how things would have went if it would have been 1-1.
