Jürgen Klopp admitted his Liverpool FC side have lost their ‘mojo’ after falling to surprise Champions League defeat at Red Star Belgrade.
Two first-half striker from Milan Pavkov proved enough for Red Star to record a famous victory over Klopp’s below-par side.
Liverpool now go into their remaining Group C matches away to Paris Saint-Germain and at home to Napoli with their hopes of reaching the knock-out stages dented.
Klopp witnessed his side play poorly in defeat at Napoli last month and conceded that Liverpool are struggling to find their usual fluency.
“I saw a few games like this already and it is really difficult to find your mojo back,” he said. “You don’t find solutions on the pitch, you solve problems. We made life a bit too easy tonight.
“I don’t say it is already serious if you lose twice but we have to make sure it will not happen again as the next game is an away game [against Paris] before a very difficult home game against Napoli.
“We have to make sure you cannot ask that question again. It is too early to say how it is. 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.
“We have to make sure in Paris that we do better. We will talk about that but tonight we can’t change it.”
Klopp was left to rue a miss by Daniel Sturridge, who blazed over the crossbar when the Red Star goal was gaping with the score at 0-0.
When asked to put his finger on what went wrong, Klopp said: “I’ve only got 10 fingers.
“The first big chance to Daniel was a very big one. We gave them too many set-pieces. They scored with a header after the corner and the second goal was out of the blue.
“We gave the ball away and that’s not cool in a game like this, an atmosphere like this, a situation like this.
“You then have to play your best football in a negative mood. It was a blow.
“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 – big if – we had scored early the game would have changed but we didn’t.”
