Rodgers wants the players to move on from Gerrard’s red and the defeat in the same manner as the last loss to United
The last time Liverpool lost a Premier League game prior to Sunday was to Manchester United at Old Trafford in December. On that day, Liverpool could feel rightly aggrieved to have been on the end of a 3-nil defeat. On Sunday, despite a late rally, there was less a feeling of ‘what might have been’ and more a feeling of, ‘can we reload and try again?’.
Make no mistake, the stats show that, despite being down to 10 men for half the match, Liverpool could have stolen a point, at least. The truth is though, they didn’t deserve it. Particularly not after making an average – yet very expensive – Man Utd side look nailed on for the final Champions League spot.
But Brendan Rodgers refuses to dwell on the defeat, and instead wants the players to put it behind them and respond in the same way to the last United defeat. Speaking to Sky Sports, Rodgers said: “That last performance at Old Trafford was a great springboard for us. We went on and, up until this point, we hadn’t lost a league game.
“So now we must use this similarly. We must use this in the same way; refocus, get over the disappointment and then come back into a tough game next against Arsenal and really look to get the points there.
“We had a 10-game objective that we set. Built into that was that we were not going to win every single game. It’s still very much [possible] for us to go where we want to go, which is the top four. We just need to fight that bit harder and make up a five-point difference.”
The Reds now go into a 12-day break, without a game until 4th April away at Arsenal and it’ll be a long 12 days but hopefully provide the team with enough time to both get a number of players back to something close to match fitness, and put together a game-plan for ensuring the same kind of first half performance doesn’t happen again at the Emirates.
