Yes, the pitch didn’t help; especially for the front three but that’s no excuse really. Napoli are a side that are used to getting the ball down and passing it on the floor; they very nearly won the Italian league last year playing an attractive brand of football under Mauricio Sarri. The pitch was as detrimental to their style of play as it was to ours but they looked the more threatening throughout, forcing good saves out of Alisson whilst we failed to register a single shot on target for the first time in over three years.
So, the Reds went to Naples (which is never an easy place to visit), played a really good side and succumbed to a late Italian winner. There’s no reason to panic. It’s European football and that happens sometimes. If Insigne wasn’t so ridiculously fast, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to meet that cross last night. Whilst that may seem of little relevance in the grand scheme of things, this is a side which is full of inexperienced young players and they were taught a valuable lesson by Carlo Ancelotti’s side. Small margins can be crucial. They’ll learn from that.
If the pint-sized Neapolitan didn’t get his toe on Callejon’s cross, there’d be plenty of people calling Wednesday’s display a gritty, pragmatic performance to secure what would have been a valuable point away in Europe. After all, there seemed to be a marked reluctance to commit men forward in the Stadio San Paolo in the way that we usually do. The overlapping runs of the full backs in particular were notably less frequent. If this proves anything, its that Klopp is both willing and able to vary the side’s tactical set up depending on the occasion. Whilst yesterday’s alterations didn’t work out as would have been hoped, being flexible enough to adopt a more conservative approach away in Europe may prove valuable later in the season. Granted, we were winless in two before the Napoli game but we were arguably the better side twice against Chelsea. We’d have won both of them games if it weren’t for the brilliance of Eden Hazard. It seems like a long time ago since we were last able to compete with Chelsea in the manner that we did recently. We’ve matched them intermittently over the past decade or so with our best eleven players on the pitch but even after rotating last week, we still looked the better outfit. I’d argue that this has never previously been the case at any point since Abramovich bought the South Londoners in 2003. That strength in numbers is particularly pleasing as a lack of depth has seen us fall short in the past, most notably when we finished runners up in the Premier League in both 2008/09 and 2013/14. In the here and now, we’re second in our Champions League group having already played two of what should be the three most difficult fixtures already. If we beat City on Sunday, we’ll be top of the Premier League again after finishing a run of seven enormously important and difficult early season fixtures. And that’s without playing to the limits of our capabilities for any significant period as well.
We’ve still got Oxlade Chamberlain to return from injury too. He was fantastic in parts last season and I’m excited to see what role Klopp can find for him in a squad that’s already brimming with attacking talent. Let’s not forget Adam Lallana either. He’s somewhat of a forgotten man at the minute because of his recent injury problems but he was a genuinely key player for Liverpool a little over 12 months ago. There’s plenty of talk of him being finished but it’d be unwise to write him off just yet. We’ve already shown this season that there’s a new found sense of grit and resilience about this team. I’m backing us to highlight that by responding with a win at Anfield on the weekend to not only end what’s been a brief yet disappointing run of results, but to prove that the optimism that has still remained for many of us was not misplaced. I can almost hear it now: “Libpool: top of the league, Libpool, Libpool: top of the league.”Article by Matty Davies @matty95davies 
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