Michael Owen has refused to join the media pile-on of Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp, highlighting the improved nature of his former side’s performances recently, despite a score of losses, as reported by HITC.
The Reds succumbed to a third Premier League defeat in a row, after a late collapse against Leicester handed Brendan Rodgers’ side a 3-1 victory at the King Power Stadium.
“Liverpool came out and they played brilliant,” the former striker told Premier League Productions. “That’s as good as I have seen Liverpool for a long time.”
“I am thinking about Burnley and Southampton’s. Some of the rubbish we have been watching in recent weeks. It just has been a pale shadow of Liverpool,” Owen added. “Jurgen Klopp came out after the Man City game and said ‘we played really well’. He was very positive. I think he will be even more so after today.”
Jurgen Klopp highlighted after the game that his club had been more “dominant” than their opposition – at least until beyond the 78th minute and a highly contentious VAR call to let James Maddison’s equaliser stand.
While it will be difficult to focus on the positives following another humbling result against a top four rival, Owen’s evaluation of the tie is actually somewhat sound.
Excusing the results of Liverpool’s last couple of fixtures, we saw a far more combative, united effort from the team for the best part of the game against Manchester City – up until a late calamity at the back changed our fortunes.
Add a dodgy VAR decision to the mix, and the circumstances were near identical for our defeat yesterday.
That being said, there are still a lot of positives that we can take from the meeting; should we play in a similar way for the rest of the season, without letting our heads drop at the earliest opportunity, there’s no reason why we couldn’t still qualify for the Champions League.