Jurgen Klopp has revealed Liverpool have had “four or five days of absolute truth” following the “worst” performance of his tenure against Napoli.
Liverpool have endured a rocky start to the season, winning just two of six Premier League games and losing 4-1 to Napoli in their Champions League opener.
They host Ajax on Tuesday in their first game since the heavy defeat in Italy.
“Is this the situation I wanted? No, but now we’re in it, I find it interesting and challenging,” said Liverpool manager Klopp.
“Good things happened in the past and this team showed so much consistency. We have to respond.”
Klopp says the team have had honest meetings where they didn’t “hide anything” in a bid to improve the situation.
“We had to talk, we had to show and we had to train. That’s what we did.
“We had a general meeting, showed them the situations and they were too obvious, it was not needed to say a lot. Do I question the players? Generally no. But in this situation yes. Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you do that?
“We had obvious football problems, defending, attacking, these kind of things, and what leads to these problems is a misjudgement of the situation. The players want to sort the situation.
“We are not over the moon about our season so far. But in this game it looked like everybody wanted to sort the problem for themselves and that gave us no structure to work together.
“We had four or five days now of absolute truth. We didn’t hide anything or hold back anything, we said it how it is. Not to knock the players down, just to make sure where we are now, this is the starting point for us and we have to make sure we sort the problems again together on the pitch.”
Liverpool did not play at the weekend as all Premier League matches were postponed following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
They are set to travel to Chelsea on Sunday although that match could also be in doubt due to policing demands ahead of the Queen’s funeral.
Klopp is confident Liverpool fans will respect a minute’s silence for the Queen before the Ajax game.
“There are plenty of examples where people showed exactly the right respect,” he added.
“One which surprised me, and I was really proud of that moment, was last season when we played Manchester United around a very sad situation with Cristiano Ronaldo’s family.
“And that is what I expect. For me, it is clear that’s what we have to do. That’s it.”
Reflecting on Liverpool’s display against Napoli, Klopp said: “It was a real horror show. Nine out of 11 were below their level
“It was the worst game since I’ve been here. We’ve had a few, Villa away, but there are always glimpses of us. In this game, nothing. We have to understand why.”
Liverpool will be without full-back Andy Robertson this week due to a knee injury.
Klopp says the defender will be unavailable until after the upcoming international break.
Fabio Carvalho is fit but Curtis Jones remains sidelined.
