Jurgen Klopp likened Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane's mindset to that of basketball legend Kobe Bryant as he assured his players will keep attempting to respond to adversity.
Salah netted against Newcastle United in December as he equalled Jamie Vardy's Premier League record of scoring and assisting in 15 consecutive games, but followed that up with blanks against Tottenham and Leicester City in the league.
Liverpool were held 2-2 by Antonio Conte's side before a 1-0 loss to Leicester, in which Salah missed his first penalty in 16 top-flight attempts and headed the subsequent rebound onto the crossbar with the goal gaping.
In the same game at the King Power Stadium, Mane wastefully blasted over a glorious chance with the scores still level, with that miss coming back to haunt Liverpool when Ademola Lookman struck later.
But Reds manager Klopp insisted that neither Salah, nor Mane, will rest on their laurels and feel sorry for themselves as he pinpointed their persistent attitude as a key to their success.
"We don't have a lot of experience of Mo dealing with crisis or whatever, because he doesn't usually have to," Klopp told reporters.
"Missing a penalty is tough, especially after the rebound going against the crossbar, that was unlucky there's no doubt about that.
"But that's it pretty much, they are top-class players who deal constantly with failure. That's how our lives work, even in some of the best games the boys play many situations don't work out.
"And then you deal with it in the game, and that's what you learn as a footballer pretty quickly. Whoever you are, no matter how good you are, often you will constantly fail in a decisive moment.
"None of us have ever succeeded in all difficult situations. It is what it is, I'm not sure but I think Kobe Bryant is still the one player with the most missed situations in the NBA history.
"He is one of the greatest players ever, you have to try it and you have to come in these situations; if you fail, no problem just go again and everything will be fine – that's pretty much the mindset Mo, and Sadio, is in."
Salah has been in fine form this league campaign, recording 15 goals and nine assists in 19 appearances, but the same cannot be said of his frontline partner Mane.
The Senegal international started the 2021-22 term brightly, netting seven times in his opening 12 top-flight outings, but has since struggled – failing to find the net in each of his last seven games.
He is also the worst-performing Liverpool forward in terms of finishing. Mane has underperformed his expected goals (xG) tally of 8.88, which is perhaps best explained by the fact he has only converted 11.86 per cent of chances - Diogo Jota the second-lowest among the same group with (19.23), followed by Salah (19.74).
However, Klopp highlighted the importance of Mane's all-round influence on his Liverpool side as the most important aspect of the forward's work, despite a lean run of form in front of goal.
"Sadio has no problem with confidence, but of course the momentum is not there finishing wise at the moment," he added.
"He has been playing really well, actually my analyst made a video to show Sadio how much he contributes to our game, how good he is in certain moments and situations.
"Obviously, the intention was to show that he should not be worried about the finishing not being there and that he is still an incredibly important player for us.
"As a striker, pretty much of all of them go through these kinds of things – it's happened to Sadio before and I'm positive that he will have some good chances to score again on Sunday.
"He is too important for us to just think about these kinds of things, you have to take these situations from time to time and then after he will be good again – we work on it football-wise, but there's no point talking about it and making it bigger than it needs to be."
Liverpool sit 12 points behind league leaders Manchester City, who edged past Arsenal 2-1 on Saturday, heading into their visit with fellow title contenders Chelsea on Sunday.
Enzo Maresca delighted as ‘fantastic’ Leicester move to brink of promotion
Enzo Maresca praised his Leicester players for the 5-0 thrashing of Southampton that put the Foxes a win away from clinching automatic promotion.
Ghana winger Abdul Fatawu scored three of them, with Wilfred Ndidi and Jamie Vardy also on target.
Leicester need only to win at Preston on Monday, or at home to Blackburn on the final day, to make sure they will finish ahead of at least one of Leeds or Ipswich. Indeed, if Leeds lose at QPR on Friday Leicester will be up before they take to the field again.
Maresca, in his first season as City manager, said: “I don’t think that was the best performance of the season but the performance was fantastic, very good on and off the ball.
“We could have been better on the ball but we are all very happy because the opposition are a fantastic team.
“The good thing about tonight is that now we know that with one win we get promoted.
“It was a good feeling at the end, the fans have been fantastic.”
Fatawu, on loan from Sporting Lisbon, opened the scoring in the 25th minute when Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall played him through. The 20-year-old might have been offside but the flag stayed down. Southampton manager Russell Martin was also aggrieved that a challenge on Saints striker Che Adams by City defender Wout Faes was not given as a foul by referee Robert Madley.
The second half belonged to Leicester though, with Ndidi charging in to head home a cross from Stephy Mavididi to double the lead.
Fatawu struck again in the 75th minute when he accepted a pass from substitute Hamza Choudhury before smashing past goalkeeper Alex McCarthy.
Fatawu set up Vardy for a well-taken fourth and completed the rout with an emphatic finish after the former England striker returned the favour.
Maresca, however, joked: “I just said ‘next game you will be on the bench’ because with Abdul and young players especially, after three goals he is already thinking he is a top player.”
Saints – famously beaten 9-0 by Leicester in the Premier League in 2019 – must now pick themselves up for the play-offs barring an extraordinary combination of results and scorelines.
Martin made it clear he would not be doing that for them though, so disappointed was he with their capitulation.
“The players need to show a bit of love for each other and pick each other up, I’m fed up of doing that,” he said.
“They need to feel some pain – the same pain that I’m feeling right now.
“Rolling over like that, it’s actually pathetic, losing 5-0. They have to rally round as a group and show some care for each other.
“I did not like what I saw from my team one bit at 2-0 down. Self-preservation, our body language and people throwing their hands up in the air.
“It surprised me actually. What can you do? I told them I didn’t like it.
“I told them Che Adams is out of contract this summer and the one person who has the excuse if he didn’t really want to be all in and not work hard for his team, but he did that more than anyone. So it was inexcusable for anyone else not to do that.
“The fans were amazing, they were still clapping at the end and deserved better than that.”
Garry Monk unhappy with penalty decision that cost Cambridge two valuable points
Cambridge boss Garry Monk was scathing of referee Will Finnie’s decision to award Wycombe a late penalty as the two sides recorded a 1-1 League One draw on Tuesday night.
Finnie penalised substitute Lyle Taylor seven minutes from time, allowing Luke Leahy to equalise and make Cambridge’s bid to avoid relegation go down to the final day.
A victory would have kept the U’s up and they led through Gassan Ahadme, despite illness and injury leading to Monk having only one fit centre-back available to him.
“It’s not in a million years a penalty,” Monk said afterwards.
“It’s got nothing to do with the players. It was taken out of our hands by a decision from an official that I think’s extremely poor. I’m not surprised that decision was given either, from the performance of the referee today.
“It is what it is, we’ve got to deal with it and the ramifications of it. We’re not in a place that we should have been and deserved to be tonight, where we were safe.
“In the second half, what more can you ask? We had some good chances tonight, we scored our goal. The bitter bit is not coming off with three points. We deserve to be in the situation where the job is done tonight.
“I’m really proud of them. They deserved to walk off this pitch tonight in front of our fans with the job done. We can feel deflated tonight but when we wake up tomorrow, we know what the job is.
“If we continue to show the amount of effort in what we’re doing then on Saturday we’ll get what we deserve, or what we did deserve tonight.”
Wycombe boss Matt Bloomfield was delighted to see his side make it 10 points from their last four away matches.
“We’ve played Shrewsbury, Port Vale – less so Carlisle because they were already relegated – and Cambridge. Teams that wanted points, needed points.
“The one thing I wanted to come away from every game is not being able to pick which team needed the points and which team didn’t.
“I wanted us to play with that intensity, that need to keep improving, the need to keep moving forward. It’s how we feel about ourselves. The boys are disappointed, they wanted to win tonight and I think they way we played showed that.
“You can’t win every game, we have to be very respectful of the way Cambridge played and performed but I think we did enough to win the game.
“First half we were excellent, it’s as dominant as we’ve been. The only slight disappointment was that we weren’t ahead. To show the character to go and get a penalty and come back, I thought we were very good.”
Grant McCann hails ‘outstanding’ response as Doncaster close on play-off spot
Grant McCann was a proud man after Doncaster won 4-1 at Colchester to register a 10th straight victory and move into the play-off places.
Colchester took a ninth-minute lead through Jayden Fevrier, who converted Tom Hopper’s cross at the far post, but remain in relegation danger after Rovers’ emphatic comeback.
Luke Molyneux equalised after collecting Jamie Sterry’s short free-kick and scoring with a low 25-yard shot and Doncaster took a 22nd-minute lead through Harrison Biggins, who netted from close range from Molyneux’s delivery.
Tom Anderson netted a third in the 76th minute at the near post from Hakeeb Adelakun’s pass, and Joe Ironside sealed victory when he converted after Sam Hornby had tipped James Maxwell’s shot onto a post.
A point on the final day against Gillingham will seal a play-off spot regardless of results elsewhere and McCann said: “I’m really proud.
“Obviously conceding early wasn’t ideal for us but the response was outstanding.
“We scored two very good goals, the first one from Mols (Molyneux) and the second one was another very good goal and something we knew could help us in the game, Biggo’s (Biggins) runs from the centre circle in between the posts after good play by Mols.
“In the first half, we were a little bit edgy and it was a little bit even Steven in the game.
“But in the second half, we were really comfortable and scored another couple of really good goals.
“We always play for more goals; we never sit tight and take what we’ve got – that’s just the way we like to go about things.
“We came up against a team that’s obviously down the wrong end of the table and we knew it was going to be tough.”
Fevrier had Colchester on track to secure survival but they go into Saturday’s final game just three points above the drop zone, with their goal difference superior by four over Sutton.
Colchester boss Danny Cowley said: “It was a tough night for us.
“We have the ability to self-harm, to self-destruct, in a game where we let four terrible goals in.
“For 75 minutes, it was 2-1 and they’ve had three shots at goal, two from 30 yards, and somehow they’re winning the game.
“We were 2-1 down at half-time where we felt we shouldn’t have been, as we’d done a lot right.
“We were in total ascendency and they don’t even want to score any more goals, they want to hang onto what they’ve got and we gift them another two goals.
“I’ve just looked back at the goals and they’re very hard to defend.
“We actually played well box to box but you can’t say you’ve played well when we’ve conceded the goals that we have.
“It’s a damaging night and I’m really angry. We just did the basics so poorly.”
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