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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
Caoimhe O'Neill

Liverpool star Gini Wijnaldum makes 'painful' pre-season admission ahead of Manchester City clash

Liverpool midfielder Gini Wijnaldum has insisted the Reds are raring to put their pre-season woe behind them.

Jurgen Klopp's side were defeated 3-0 by Napoli on Sunday, this followed a winless three-stop tour of America.

And ahead of Liverpool's Community Shield encounter with Manchester City this weekend, the Dutchman has urged the Reds are vying to improve.

Speaking to Liverpoolfc.com, Wijnaldum urged: "That’s what we have to do, it’s all about making minutes as much as possible, but also to get the results.

"The season already starts [on Sunday] so the result and the performance, it’s important for us to get confidence and to keep on going. This is painful but we have to learn from it and we have to strike back.

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"It was not our best game. I think it was a real poor performance from the team, the things that we normally do right with pressing, playing football [and] creating chances we didn’t do and they were quite good. 

"The chances that they had they scored. Most of them were because we made mistakes and they just took the chances that they had.

"We play the games to win the games but unfortunately we didn’t win them. Especially if you play like [against Napoli] it’s really painful to lose the game because normally we are quite good with the pressing and creating chances and playing football, but we were not 100 per cent concentrated.

The Reds lost to Borussia Dortmund and Sevilla before ending their US pre-season tour in a draw against Sporting.

"We didn’t do it as a team, we made too many mistakes and they took the chances that they had. If you play a good game but you lose it’s different, especially in pre-season, but if you lose a game like this it’s painful."

Liverpool are currently in Evian to prepare for this weekend's Wembley clash.

The European champions will have a chance to return to winning ways on Wednesday as they face Ligue 1 outfit Lyon in Geneva.

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