Liverpool suffered their second loss of the Champions League group stages with a 2-0 defeat to Red Star Belgrade on Wednesday evening.
The loss sees the Reds fall to second place in Group C behind Napoli on a head to head basis due to the fact that the Italian side defeated them on Matchday Two.
After qualification looked to be a strong possibility after Matchday three, there is little doubt that the Reds have a real fight on their hands with all four teams in the group now separated by two points.
Understandably Jurgen Klopp was not a happy man after the game, which saw Red Star take a commanding 2-0 lead before the half hour courtesy of two goals from Milan Pavkov.
The German has been concerned at times this season by the way that Liverpool have failed to get into their stride during games and it proved a major issue once again in Belgrade.
The Independent reported Klopp as saying:
“I saw a few games like this already and it is really difficult to find your mojo back. You don’t find solutions on the pitch, you solve problems. We made life a bit too easy tonight.
"We had a lot of moments when we could get in control of the game and we didn’t do it, we just made the wrong decision.
Daniel Sturridge who started in place of Roberto Firmino missed a gilt-edged chance to put the Reds in front in the 15th minute, while Mo Salah had a number of chances in the second half but the Egyptian could not find a way past Milan Borjan in the Red Star goal.
Klopp knew that the Sturridge miss would be a big moment.
"The first big chance to Daniel was a very big one. We gave them too many set-pieces and they scored with a header after the corner and the second goal was out of the blue.
“We tried to change in the second half, we had some situations.
"Very dominant, didn’t give a lot of counter-attacks away but we had moments we had ‘nearly’ chances but the biggest chances were in the last two or three minutes.
"If we had scored early the game would have changed but we didn’t.”
After falling to a third consecutive away defeat in the competition for the first time in the club’s history, Liverpool face a daunting challenge in three weeks when they head to Paris to play PSG.
The French champions currently sit third in the group after playing out their second draw with Napoli in as many games, this time it was a 1-1 draw in Naples.
It was widely speculated once the draw was released that group C would be one of the tightest in the competition and that is exactly the way how things have played out.
In all probability, it will come down to the last round of games and while Napoli are certainly a formidable opponent, we know there is nothing like a special European night at Anfield to get the best out of the squad
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