Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp admits player confidence is an issue as a seven-hour goal drought contributed to the 1-0 defeat by Burnley which ended an unbeaten home league run stretching back to April 2017.
Ashley Barnes’s 83rd-minute penalty was his 100th senior club career goal and he became the first Burnley player to score an away league goal since October 3.
For Liverpool, whose 68-match unbeaten run at home was brought to an end, their goal drought now stretches to seven hours and 18 minutes.
“Confidence is a small flower and obviously someone has stamped on it, and now at this moment we have to find a new one and we will. But for tonight it was not enough,” said Klopp.
“It’s not the luckiest period of our lives but it would be a bit cheap to put it only on that, that we don’t have enough luck.
“I think our problem is the decision-making at the moment and the decisions are based on the information I give and also the mood you are in and how confident you are to do it in really small spaces.
HIGHLIGHTS | What a result! "That 68 league game unbeaten run has come to an end" 🙌 How it happened ⬇️ — Burnley FC (@BurnleyOfficial) January 21, 2021
“That’s the reason we didn’t score in these moments. It is not cool to mention it but we won games with lesser possession but we didn’t win because we didn’t score in these situations.
“How is it possible we lose that game? But we lost it, we made even that happen. It is our fault and that means my fault.”
Defeat made it just three points from the last 15 and left Klopp’s defending champions six points behind arch-rivals and current leaders Manchester United.
Klopp, who left the misfiring Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino on the bench for an hour, knows what the problem is but knows the only way to solve it is on the training ground.
“If I sit now here, losing against Burnley and didn’t score for the last four games and talk about the title race how silly that would be?” he added.
“It is still not rocket science but it still didn’t work out again tonight.
“That’s the job a manager and coach has to do. I’m not the first and I won’t be the last one.
“We need to score goals and that is what we have to do. We have to work harder but not talking like it is an easy situation.
“We have to get better and we have to become ourselves again in the decisive moments.
“In the last third in the last moment decision-making is not how it should be.
“Everyone will talk about it, which makes the problem not smaller but bigger.
“It shows how incredible and consistent the boys were and that is nothing anyone should have been taking for granted.”
Clarets boss Sean Dyche took less pleasure from ending Liverpool’s long unbeaten run than he did from moving seven clear of the bottom three on 19 points.
“I think the last one is most important, to gain the points we have done after a really tricky start and get back to winning games I am really pleased with that side of things,” he said.
“Physically we are always thought of of being strong and I think we were, we were strong in the way we held our team shape.
“We don’t work with the ball as much as other teams, particularly at these type of grounds, so you have to work well as a team without the ball.
“The main thing which is pleasing is the mentality, we did keep probing, we did keep asking questions.
“We do believe in the fact we can create and I think Barnesy was excellent the way he turned in the box – and it is a penalty.
“If we were due one it is a good place to get one.”
