Jurgen Klopp laid into his Liverpool team at halftime after their tepid first-half performance against Swansea, and saw his Reds turn the game around and go on to win 2-1.
James Milner’s penalty after 84 minutes secured the three points but Liverpool had fallen behind to a Leroy Fer goal after 10 minutes and might have conceded more as Swansea were in control.
Milner said the manager had been annoyed with the team at half-time and Klopp confirmed:
‘How angry was I? Very. I said to the boys I have no problem with this.
‘I’m 49 and I lost a lot of games and unfortunately I will lose a few. But today makes no sense because it’s not a day where we should lose a game.
‘It’s not allowed that we accept a bad day. Even on a bad day you have to fight against the bad start and even in this game you have to fight back.
‘And to cool down, because there were small things where we lost patience with ourselves and we were moaning about decisions, even though they were absolutely right.
‘So we have to stop this. And for this half-time was good. We were angry at half-time but with ourselves, nobody else.And second half, we were cool again.’
Klopp added that he was surprised by Liverpool’s start:
‘There was no sign in training this week,’ he said. ‘But we’re still learning.’