Dembele, Eriksen and others on what went wrong at Anfield

The players were subdued but honest in their assessment of Saturday's loss at Liverpool.

Two goals in three minutes from the lethal Sadio Mane gave the Reds a 2-0 victory as we failed to match up to them in the first quarter of the game.

Heung-Min Son was denied one-on-one by Simon Mignolet and Harry Kane was marginally off-side when he hit the post in the second period, but we couldn't get into our stride and came away disappointed and empty-handed.

Mousa Dembele, Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld and Hugo Lloris all spoke to us afterwards to consider what went wrong...

Mousa Dembele

Thoughts on the game
"They were much more aggressive than us and started much better than us. At the end we can ask as many questions as we want but they were more aggressive and wanted to win more than us. I don’t know why. The way we started, maybe we were too lax, maybe we were too complacent – it’s difficult to answer. Everybody could see that they were on top of us and in every battle they were more aggressive than us.”

On facing fellow high-flying sides
"If you see the stats, maybe we don’t do well in big games away from home and I don’t know why. We have the quality to beat any team."

What was said at the interval?
"At half-time the manager tried to wake us up, give us advice as to how we could turn it around and tell us that, like at Manchester City, we could still win."

What happens now?
"After the game sometimes you need to be relaxed and let everyone think about their own game. There’s not a lot said afterwards, we leave it for the team meeting."

Christian Eriksen

On post-match emotions
"We are very disappointed, first of all with how we played. We could and should have done much better. There is nothing to say really. Everyone is disappointed, everyone knows what went wrong and everyone knows what we need to do better. Right now, the game is on our minds, we know we can play much better and that’s frustrating."

What can we do better?
"Overall, we need to help each other more. We tried to do our thing but it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to. They pressed high, we knew that but we didn’t come out properly and that gave them gaps that they managed to find a way through. Overall, the performance wasn’t on our level. We know it’s tough at Anfield but we could have done much better. They played like we normally play but today, there was really only one team on the pitch."

Toby Alderweireld

On early woes
"In the first half we didn’t bring the quality to the game that we normally bring, we made some mistakes and because of the mistakes they took advantage and we were 2-0 down which makes it difficult here."

On the rest of the game
"We tried to change it in the second half and it was better but you need a goal to get back into it. That didn’t happen and then it’s difficult. Normally aggression and desire are our strengths so it’s difficult to see why that happened today and if we don’t bring that level the same as the opponent or even better then it’s difficult."

Hugo Lloris

Overall view on the game
"It’s a big disappointment because we expected more today but Liverpool were much better, especially in the first half. We had a lack of aggression and struggled to put intensity into our performance. It was the opposite for Liverpool, they played high-intensity in the first half and we lost a lot of balls in the middle of the pitch. We lost the battle in the middle of the pitch and that’s difficult against a top team like Liverpool."