Manchester City winger Jeremy Doku insists they matched Liverpool during Sunday night’s defeat.
The Reds won 2-0 at the Etihad through goals from Mohamed Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai.
Doku said later: “We tried. I had a lot of attacking situations but after the two goals that they scored they played very deep. They defended very well and then played on the counter attack so it was hard for us to find spaces. Some game are like that. We just have to keep on going and take the good things from the game.
On his duel with Trent Alexander-Arnold, he continued: “It is a good question because I passed him a lot of times but it was then the final pass or I don’t know. The most important thing after passing is to create something from it, and I played some good balls in front of the goal but we have to score. We have to analyse the game and see what I can do better and what we can do better as a team.
“To be fair if I look at the game I don’t think that they were much better than us. Two goals, one set piece and the second goal was a long ball, so well done to them. We know their qualities and that they like to play in behind. They did well and after it is hard to come back against a team that defends well like that.
“We played well but the situations that we had we could have dealt better with them. Today we played better against them than we did away. Of course there is a gap in points but today you can’t say that they ran over us.”