Jurgen Klopp admits Brighton draw was a 'fair' result
Following his side's 2-2 draw away to Brighton and Hove Albion, Liverpool coach Jürgen Klopp agreed that the result was a "fair" reflection of the game.
After going behind to Simon Adingra's early goal, the Reds fought back to take a lead in at half time thanks to a Mohamed Salah brace.
"Two-one up is a good result for half-time here because it is a really good team and it is difficult to defend them all the time," Klopp told reporters, acknowledging the strength of the opposition on Sunday.
However, he admitted that his side ought to have grabbed a third goal: "There were one or two really good opportunities but because we don't score there, we keep the game open and in this area where the free-kick happened we produced too many set-pieces, corners and especially free-kicks."
An intense game
With both sides playing with a high intensity and a high-stakes pressing game, Klopp admitted that Roberto De Zerbi's side caused the Reds multiple problems.
"We wanted to do high pressing, it was the right thing to do, but in the same moment it caused the issue that they play out from time to time, we don't win the ball and then the pitch is really big and [we are] chasing back. They do that well," he said.
The German described Brighton's opener as being "served on a plate" but applauded his team's efforts in forcing errors at the other end which led to Liverpool's two goals.
For the first goal, Harvey Elliott's pressure on Lewis Dunk led to the defender giving the ball away; for the second, Dominik Szoboszlai nipped into the win the ball before being dragged down by Pascal Gross for the penalty.
A red card for Gross?
When asked whether Gross should have been sent off for this foul, Klopp was bemused: "I didn't realise it, to be honest. I saw it was a penalty and didn't think about red, but I heard now it is about goalscoring opportunity."
In any case, Salah converted the penalty and gave Liverpool the lead for the first time in the game - perhaps not a fair reflection on how the game had gone.
Klopp, however, didn't see it that way: "[I was] not surprised. I saw more surprising things in football. The thing is, I know how it looked and I accept that 100 per cent. Some things I didn't like, but you could hear in the stadium how often we were really close to winning the ball. That's the risk they take."
"I know some moments they had the upper hand, but that's it and I really think if we had scored the third one, we would have deserved to win. Definitely."