Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp praised his defence after their 1-0 win against West Ham.
Sadio Mane's goal midway through the first half settled a tight affair on Saturday evening, with the Reds battling their way to a seventh consecutive Premier League victory and 12th win in a row across all competitions.
Klopp said, "We should have done it differently but there were different counter-attacks. The first goal they nearly scored when Trent cleared the situation with a long leg, that was really bad defending, we have to admit that. No pressure on the ball in midfield, no close last line and too high so both centre-halves were surprised by Fornals' run and Trent was just not close enough.
"That we could sort it in the end was for different reasons. First I would say, Ali was really calm and made it not easy for him and Trent is then at least close enough to clear the situation. Second half, we had different moments, there were different moments. It was a problem of the first half because in the first half we defended Antonio extremely well with these high balls and long balls. We took some risks in the last line for their build-up, we played with three against five and that we should have enough time to get into the right position to clear the situation or to win the challenge.
"Second half then, it was slightly different. I think it started directly with the ball where Antonio and a little push for Virg was enough, Virg deflects the ball and then Bowen is through. It was like a sign for them - 'Let's do that' - and we never found it back to the 100 per cent again. It meant we were now always a little bit late; even if Antonio did not win the ball, he made sure that we could not win it as well and then they were in much better positions for the second balls."
He continued: "That's two different problems and we could have done both [better] - we have to do the first better, that's a mistake we should not make, and the rest is as well a little bit because of the quality of Antonio. He is doing that extremely well, I couldn't see one foul of him, he didn't need that, he just used his body. So that was pretty impressive.
"How it is, when you are not perfectly organised or you don't win the decisive challenges in the first place then you need your legs and you need passion, a big heart, to defend it anyway and that's what we did. First Robbo and then Naby and all these kind of things and Ali. We know that we needed some luck in these moments and proper defending just in a different way, but I think it is difficult to deny them over 95 minutes. These things can always happen, but first half they didn't happen and second half much too often."
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