Pain in the rain: Liverpool's players face up to
the shootout agony at Anfield
Liverpool's flops have apologised to their fans for
the 'catastrophe' of losing at home to minnows Northampton in the
Carling Cup.
The Reds were dumped out on
penalties by the League Two side at Anfield after being held to a
2-2 after extra-time. It piles the pressure on manager Roy Hodgson,
who has already come out to say sorry for the
performance.
And now the players have
admitted they need to drastically improve their form as their
season threatens to collapse early on.
Striker Milan Jovanovic, who
scored his debut goal to open the scoring last night, said: 'It was
a catastrophe. I am so disappointed. What can I say?
'It was a very difficult night
for me, for all the players and the team. Of course we feel sorry
for the fans. We know this is not Liverpool. It is very
bad.
'I am so surprised by the
performance. I have not got enough experience of English football
but I didn't expect this.
Nightmare: Roy Hodgson consoles Sotirios Kyrgiakos
after the defeat
'Northampton played a
really good game. We played a bad game. We started very nice but I
don't know why we lost the ball so fast or why we couldn't keep the
ball.
'We had a lot of young players
and sometimes you need experience. We tried to run a lot but we
lost our condition and it ended up being difficult to do something
special in attack.
'But this is football. I am so
disappointed. We all are. We are sorry for the result but we have
to move on now.'
Liverpool, who started the
season with a renewed sense of optimism under Rafa Benitez's
successor Hodgson, already find themselves well off the pace in the
Barclays Premier League after a slow start to the
campaign.
Pure delight: Northampton celebrate beating giants
Liverpool on penalties
And Jovanovic has warned that
they must start picking up points quickly if they want to
re-establish themselves as a leading force.
He added: 'Every game from now
is very important. We have got five points from five games. It is
not enough. We have had five very difficult games.
'We just have to pass one
difficult test (against Sunderland) and maybe in the next three or
four games we can start to collect a lot of points. We have to
stick together.'
