The Reds recovered from Fernando’s free-kick that gave the hosts a lead when Philippe Coutinho’s one-two with Sadio Mane sliced open the opposition defence and allowed him to slam home before half-time.
However, despite their heavy pressure forcing a succession of chances, Liverpool were made to settle for a point as they couldn’t muster a winner.
It means Klopp’s side are second in Group E after two games, two points behind early leaders Sevilla.
Read on for a full summary of the manager’s post-match press conference at the Otkrytiye Arena.
On whether he was frustrated by the result…
Of course. As I said it already a few times, we in this moment are not the luckiest team in world football, so it’s not that things go easy for us. We did really well in creating chances against a very defence-orientated team. We didn’t give a lot of chances away for them; the free-kick they scored with was not a foul, so it’s difficult to change this. In defending if you win the ball clear and there’s still a whistle it’s difficult, but it was a brilliant free-kick. We made our equaliser, we scored and we could have created even more chances, that’s the crazy thing. We did enough and we had four or five 100 per cent chances and that’s then disappointing but it is like it is. In the Champions League in the group stage the only target you have is to go through the group to the next round, and that’s still possible for us. We know now more about two teams in the group and both games we could have, or should have, won but we didn’t. In the end that’s always our fault, but we will carry on and carry on like this, or even better. I saw a lot of good things tonight, it was not a perfect game, but there were a lot of good things.
On starting with Coutinho, Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Mane in the same line-up…
For the next game, we will have to see how the players are tomorrow morning when we leave the plane, but it’s good when you have all of these players around. It’s not lining up the players and then you hope something will happen, they all need rhythm, need to be in a good shape and all that stuff. It was a very intense game. For me, it’s never about the names, it’s about how we can perform and in some moments we performed as good as possible and in a lot of moments not. We have to keep on working, that’s how it is – we have to carry on, we have to create, we have to protect, we have to defend and then to score. Obviously we didn’t score often enough tonight and that’s a fact, but let’s go on.
On why Liverpool couldn’t find a second goal…
Because we didn’t. Why you couldn’t score is a really good question, it’s a big question. So because of being a little bit of being unlucky in one situation, good goalkeeper saves, I saw a lot of good saves from both goalkeepers, and wrong decisions in the decisive moment, that’s how football is. But again, how I said before, the only way you can change it is really to do it again, do it again and do it again – and that’s what we will do.
On whether he has seen enough in the first two group games to give him confidence that the Reds will go through to the last 16…
Yes, of course I have seen enough. We know more about the two teams now, we were in both games the better side. We know Moscow have a lot of injury problems tonight, for sure Quincy Promes will be back for the next game and a few other players, really good players, so that will change their game also. But what is confidence? In football you can never be sure. Yes, we are strong enough to go through this group, but we have to do it; when the door is open, you still have to walk through it and the door is not even open, we can [just] see a little bit of light in behind. But we will be ready to go through because the boys really work hard. You can see that they really want [it]. In the moment, how I said… it’s not a cross and we can shoot there, deflected and it goes there… you have sometimes these situations. Stay cool, carry on, work hard and you will succeed in the end.