Jurgen Klopp admitted Hollywood producers are unlikely to vie for the rights to the Reds’ lacklustre season, but the Liverpool boss remained upbeat about the unwritten ending to his side’s campaign.
A goalless draw against 12th-placed Crystal Palace was probably not the emphatic statement Klopp’s side would have hoped to make after spectacularly unravelling in their 5-2 Champions League defeat to Real Madrid earlier in the week.
Still, the boss felt the need to remind naysayers, including those in his own dressing room, that his side walked away with a point at Selhurst Park, saying: “I see it in your eyes and in players’ eyes as well. It looks like we lost the game. We didn’t.
“We spoiled ourselves with a lot of things, but we cannot suffer because of our own history, that would be really a joke.
“This will not be the season that everybody in the history books, when you have a look, says, ‘let’s have a look at that season again and again and again’.
“There will not be big movies about it or stuff like this, but we have to go through it anyway.
“We’ll show, it’s not always, ‘oh, here we won, all great, now we have dropped a point, all rubbish’. We have to keep going. Take the things and go again. Take the things and go again. And that’s what we’ll do.
“So, nothing really changed tonight. You can see two ways. We didn’t win, that sounds very negative. We have a point more than before, I think that sounds pretty positive. So you can choose.”
Both sides had chances to take the advantage before half-time.
The Reds’ opportunity came first when Joel Matip sent Andrew Robertson‘s free-kick in the direction of Diogo Jota, who clipped the outside edge of the left post with his header from six yards out.
Jean-Philippe Mateta nearly put Palace ahead but rattled the crossbar, the woodwork also denying Mohamed Salah soon after the restart.
Both Joe Gomez and Darwin Nunez were ruled out with injury before Saturday’s contest, the latter picking up a knock after the Real Madrid game that aggravated his shoulder injury and being left, according to Klopp, “[unable to] move that arm at all.”
He will be re-evaluated, while Gomez missed the match due to a muscle issue.
Palace are still in search of their first win of 2023, having now drawn five times since the beginning of the new year, their inability to convert chances again on display.
Eagles boss Patrick Vieira remained confident that his squad will score goals, even in the absence of leading scorer Wilfried Zaha, who is still recovering from a hamstring injury and sat out Saturday’s encounter.
He said: “I think it’s just about confidence. I’m working with them every day and I see the quality that they have. All of them can finish. All of them can score goals, and it’s just about me putting training in place so that we build that confidence.
“I don’t have any doubt about the quality that they have to finish those chances.”
