Stand-in captain Martin Skrtel is ready to demand a response from his Liverpool teammates…
Martin Skrtel is keen to ensure that his Liverpool teammates don’t dwell on Thursday’s Europa League defeat at the hands of Besiktas, and hopes that we’ll instead respond quickly with a positive result against Manchester City.
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The defending Premier League champions come to Anfield on Sunday, less than 72 hours after our unfortunate defeat in Istanbul – which came courtesy of a dramatic penalty shoot-out.
Skrtel, who captained the team in the absence of Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson, was the first to console his fellow Reds at the end of the game. However, he’s since been quick to insist that they must now move on.
The centre-back, who was quoted by our official website, said: “We’re disappointed now, but I think we have to forget about this quickly because in two days’ time we have a big game and we have to be focused on that one.”
“We came here and we wanted to get through to the next round. We’d been defending well and we tried to go for the counter-attack and score some goals, but unfortunately we couldn’t. We conceded one goal.
“Everything is so fresh now, but I think from tomorrow we have to start thinking about the next game and focusing on our next match and keep going again.”
Tolgay Arslan scored the only goal of the night, cancelling out Mario Balotelli’s first leg penalty, and eventually taking the game into extra time and penalties. Nine perfect spot kicks followed, before Dejan Lovren fired over the crossbar.
“Penalties are always either or, it’s a big lottery,” the Slovakian added. “That’s football. It could happen to anyone from the team and he was the one who didn’t score, but we cannot blame him for that. That can happen and now we need to look ahead.”