Liverpool’s preseason tour began yesterday at the Rajamangala Stadium in Thailand’s capital and the club suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of rivals Manchester United.
Debuts were handed out for new boys Darwin Nunez and Fabio Carvalho but the Reds failed to get on the scoresheet; losing 4-0 with goals from Jadon Sancho, Fred, Anthony Martial and Facundo Pellistri.
Despite the result, Jurgen Klopp was happy overall with the team’s performance, considering the lack of training time they had for the match and the conditions they were playing in.
He gave his post-match thoughts to Liverpool’s official club website.
Full-time and a very experimental #LFC lose 4-0 to #MUFC in the Bangkok Century Cup in Thailand. United went strong while Liverpool fielded three different 30-minute outfield teams. First glimpse of Nunez and Carvalho 🔴https://t.co/THZrJZ8yVt
— Ian Doyle (@IanDoyleSport) July 12, 2022
“Obviously the game came a little bit too early for us, for some of our boys, so I think we agree that we saw a lot of good things in this game, but in the decisive moments we were not clear enough with finishing our situations off. We gave massive chances away, pretty much.”
“Pretty much no-brainers, but United did well in these moments, they finished the situations off. We admit that, but that’s it pretty much. The most important thing now after the game, even when I hate losing, everybody has 30 minutes in their legs now, for some on the third day of training [that’s] really harsh but that’s the life of a professional football player. So now we can work with that and will work with that.”
“As I said, we could have scored the equaliser in the last four minutes! But that’s how it is. I know, football is a results game and we do it all for that, but we have to prepare for a full season. We had no chance to prepare for this game, really, so we had to do it like we did it with three teams, three times 30 minutes and we are now eight days in training with a big group and with all internationals it is three days.”
The Reds now head to Singapore to continue their preseason tour of Asia.