Jurgen Klopp names Liverpool player who he thought was 'exceptional' in Man Utd draw

Jurgen Klopp lept to the defence of Dominik Szoboszlai after Liverpool's draw against Manchester United.

The Reds were held to a frustrating goalless stalemate at Anfield. Despite having 34 shots on goal, the home side struggled to create any real clear-cut chances and surrendered their grip on the Premier League's summit.

Liverpool were well below their best throughout the encounter, with Szoboszlai hitting a difficult patch. The midfielder made a scintillating start to life on Merseyside after signing for £60 million from RB Leipzig in the summer transfer window. However, the 23-year-old has not been as effective in recent weeks and was substituted in the 61st minute against United.

Klopp admitted that Szoboszlai recently hit a dip in form but that was to be expected given his age and his lack of Premier League experience. But the Liverpool boss felt the Hungary captain was 'exceptional' for most of the stalemate with Erik ten Hag's side.

Speaking to reporters, Klopp said: "Might have had two or three games ago where there was a slight development from the first impression he made obviously. It was always clear that things will not go like this – he's still a very young boy. But he was exceptional today in a lot of situations in the game. But then we lost a couple of balls and it had nothing to do with the substitution or whatever, it's just you have options to do it and we wanted to change system and then you have to think. We wanted to have Joey [Gomez] then higher, put him proper on the wing – same for Kosti [Tsimikas] – so you need players in these half-spaces and it was then Cody [Gakpo]right, Lucho [Diaz] left and Mo [Salah] putting in the centre, and then we changed again with Harvey [Elliott] on 10.

"That's the thing, it's just we play a team that play man-marking, so each little tweak can make a massive difference if we use it. And actually, we were there, we had these moments when we passed the ball to the outside, if we then find the overlap – the overlaps were there in moments – and we then shoot the ball to the outside of the net instead of letting them make a mistake. If you bring that ball in the six-yard box, it's super-difficult to defend because there are a lot of legs and it can be a Man United leg who brings the ball over the line. These were the moments where we were not really there and that was the problem.

"I said, if we score an early goal, it would have been great, it would have changed everything. We were ready to use that but we didn't and then it becomes more and more intense. It was a really tough game and then they have their counter-attacks – which obviously I would say avoid that with the quality they have still for 90 minutes. That would have been really insane. So, they had their moments but not even close to what they could have had because of the counter-press, so I liked that a lot. There are a lot of good performances – it was actually the last part. I said it before, in the moment when we scored these four screamers against Fulham, I knew that one day we will sit there and think, 'Ah, you better would not have shot, you would've passed.' So, it's completely normal.

"That we are in a rush, you see then with the quality of the shots. Because these boys are able to do insane things from distance but today they [were] probably the easiest saves for [Andre] Onana pretty much because the ball rolled in his arms, so that shows the technique is not there – not because you don't have it but just because you rushed the moment and that's it."