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Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp admitted his team “deserved to lose” their Europa League clash against Toulouse on Thursday night, even though he was “100 per cent” certain that Jarell Quansah’s would be late equaliser should have been allowed to stand.
The Reds struggled to play with much intensity against the 14th best team in France so far this season. Joe Gomez hit the crossbar early on, but Toulouse were the better side for the majority of the game after the first 25 minutes or so and went 2-0 ahead thanks to goals either side of half-time.
Liverpool pulled one back through an own goal against the run of play but were quickly two behind again when Toulouse substitute Frank Magri scored the hosts’ third.
Diogo Jota reduced the deficit again towards the end of the 90, before Quansah had the ball in the net deep into stoppage time. However, it was eventually ruled out for an apparent handball from Alexis Mac Allister earlier in the build-up. In the end, Liverpool left without a point.
“We scored a third one…I think it’s a goal, 100 percent. It was pretty long [before the ball went in] and I’m not even sure the ball touched the hand at all, but that’s how it is,” Klopp told TNT Sports.
That disallowed goal wasn’t his biggest issue though, showing more concern about the nature of the performance from his team and sloppiness allowing Toulouse to score three times.
“I am a bit more concerned about [the fact that] I would have loved us to have played better, to be honest. That’s my main issue,” the boss later said at his post-match press conference.
“It was well deserved to lose because [Toulouse] won pretty much all the decisive challenges [and] battles. We have too many situations where we should have won the ball but we didn’t. On top of that we gave the ball away easily at least twice – one was a goal, the other I am not sure if it was an allowed goal or a disallowed goal. Counter-attack, third goal, last line too deep.
“Defending-wise it was just not good enough. When you concede three goals then you need to score a lot of goals to still win it and obviously it nearly happened that we got a point here. That wouldn’t have made the game better, but it would have felt better in the table.”
