Klopp's words on Chambers and Mabaya's mistakes in Liverpool defeat

Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool's German manager, accepted that both Luke Chambers and Isaac Mabaya made mistakes in the first half against Racing Strasbourg which cost them a 3-0 defeat at Anfield. For Klopp, the second half of the game was better, but they lacked a striker to capitalise on chances, while the first half was woeful for the Reds. 

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Klopp's words

"Luke Chambers and Isaac are really good players but they made these mistakes and then it's really tough. Before the game you are happy that 44,000 people are here and when you make a mistake like this, you think, 'It would be better if nobody would be in the stadium.' It's all a process and we know how good the boys are. Look in England it's like this, with the system, with the U21s, they play pretty much without crowds and competition – you cannot learn to deal with these kind of things. And today we could give the boys the opportunity to deal with these kind of things. Now they know it, how it feels, now they can use it the next time and that's very, very helpful in their development."

“I said it before the game, when we planned this game then obviously we thought we have to do it for the first-team squad really, for the first-team players because usually today we could have played the striker who didn't start yesterday, Diogo, Oxlade, Naby, Curtis, and now on matchday Naby's ill and Curtis felt a little bit and we couldn't take any risk and all of a sudden the team is really young and you play a really strong Strasbourg side.”

"I said to the boys tonight after the game, I'm really proud of the second half, of the reaction, because these boys in their age groups, they are usually always the best and now we make the step to adult football and I loved the reaction. The first half, we saw the goals. We made mistakes but Strasbourg used them really well. I think first three shots were a goal and that made it, of course, difficult to stay positive, which is very important in a football game."

“But we found a way back and second half was obviously much better. I loved a lot of performances really, how the boys buy in in the way we want to play. But when there's no real striker on the pitch, it makes life really tricky and we played in their hands with that because how they set it up with a 5-3 is that the more passes you play, the tighter the spaces get, the more likely you lose the ball. When you lose the ball, you have a counter-attack with their physical strength up front.”

“It was a tricky one but I liked the second half and I liked how the crowd... I'm 100 per cent sure the kids out there, in the first place they see a Liverpool shirt and think we should win this game clearly and then they come here and the parents probably had to explain a little bit, 'They are only slightly older than you! Most of them.' But then the crowd bought in as well second half again and that was really cool. So it was a nice lesson for us and one we will use.”