It was Liverpool’s day at Selhurst Park beating Crystal Palace where the team booked a 4-2 victory. With this win, Liverpool is alongside Manchester City and Arsenal atop the league. Though Juergen Klopp criticized Liverpool’s opening 15 minutes as childish however his mean then ensured victory where Philippe Coutinho was their master puppeteer on Saturday.
Juergen Klopp once again revealed his perfectionist streak when outlining the errors that made the contest much closer to what it should have been. Klopp reflected on BT Sport after the goals from Emre Can, Dejan Lovren, Joel Matip and Roberto Firmino and said; “The first 15 minutes, I was not too happy. It looked like a childish football, but no greed, no direction,” “But then we scored and we started playing football and I’m not sure that we’ve played a lot of times better than we played offensive-wise.”For half an hour, we created chance after chance after chance but did not score often enough.”
When asked to comment about Coutinho he smiled and said: “Good football player.” and then pressed to elaborate and added too much laughter “Very good football player.”
It was Philippe Coutinho all over the match where he pulled his strings once again with this wonderful passing. The Brazilian, 24, could have easily scored with a header when Steve Mandanda brilliantly dived low to save an effort deflected off Joel Ward’s hand. Coutinho contributed two assists where his corners were headed for a goal by Lovren and Matip. He also played a part in Liverpool’s opener finding Alberto Moreno whose cut back gave Emre Can the task of sweeping home from close range.
Jurgen Klopp said: “The defensive error we made for the first goal is because we are not at the limit of our concentration. The aggressiveness was not there at the start of the game. But I saw a lot of wonderful things offensively.”
Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew said: “The first half was difficult on the sideline. We talked about putting them under pressure but in the first period, we did not start well.
“We worked hard and defended well but we should have put more pressure on Liverpool. But they are a good team. Two set plays, though, that is not us.
“We have to tighten up on that area. Our centre-backs are good but they got done. It is something we have to work on.
“In the second half, the game hinged on key moments. There were some penalty decisions which I thought were tight. We had a tight one last season with the same referee.”
