Jurgen Klopp said people should blame him for his inexperienced Liverpool team’s shortcomings in Friday’s 2-2 FA Cup draw at Exeter City — and hinted he may pick the same side in the replay.
The youthful selection sent out by Klopp were shown up at times in twice fighting back from a goal down against the League Two side. There were three debutants at St James Park and six additional players with four or fewer Reds games behind them, while seasoned players such as Adam Lallana and Lucas Leiva looked on from the bench.
But the manager — who had claimed the rigours of the Christmas schedule and his club’s injury crisis had given him no option but to name the team he did — insisted any criticism should be directed at him, the Liverpool Echo reported.
“If you want to criticise somebody then do it with me and leave the players alone,” Klopp said. “They tried what they could.
“If they made mistakes, it was my responsibility. If they made mistakes one-on-one, it’s the responsibility of all the coaching staff. It’s not the players. We picked them to help us in this moment. They did. We drew 2-2.
“We tried to create a lineup under the time pressure we had. We trained together yesterday and this morning for around 40 minutes. We tried to create an idea. It was not too good, it was not too bad. It showed it’s very important you train together.
“We have to respect our situation. We were here to win through to the next round. It didn’t work 100 percent but it did 50 percent. Now we have another game at Anfield. It is like it is. I can’t believe we have another game!”
With Arsenal and Manchester United to come in the Premier League before the Cup third-round replay in the week beginning Jan. 18, Klopp was not promising that Exeter would be facing his first-choice team second time around, It has been reported.
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