Head coach Arne Slot tried to put a positive spin on his worst week as Liverpool head coach.
After exiting the Champions League to Paris St Germain on Tuesday they lost a Carabao Cup final they were favourites for 2-1 to Newcastle.
Arsenal‘s win over Chelsea earlier in the day meant his side’s lead at the top of the Premier League was cut to 12 points.
“Disappointing result, disappointing performance, completely different to how I felt after [the] PSG game,” Slot said after Liverpool lost back-to-back games for the first time since April.
“It took us seven, eight, nine months to lose twice in a row and it happened against two teams, one fighting for Champions League [qualification] and the other is PSG.
“I want to make clear the week started really well by us beating Southampton.
“You know if you go further into tournaments that the opposition get stronger and stronger and even Liverpool can lose games.
“It was a tough week but also a week where we extended our lead to 12 points from 10 but the last two [results] were definitely not what we wanted.”
The Dutchman insists Liverpool were not feeling the effects of a testing season in which, until Tuesday, they were in genuine contention for three trophies.
“Mentally is always difficult to judge. Were we on Tuesday mentally or physically tired? No,” he added.
“This game had nothing to do with running but only to do with duels.
“There was no intensity in terms of running in this game at all so you can’t judge if we were tired mentally or physically because we could not press them.
“You can judge a team if they press but there was nothing to press because [they] played over our press. Mentally, that’s a difficult one.
“If you look at the result of the performance, you might feel it maybe did something for us but I prefer to look at how this game went – and it went exactly how they wanted it to be, a fight with a lot of duels through the air.”
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