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Crystal Palace have become a bit of a bogey side to Liverpool but I’m not sure that’s why we lost on Sunday.

If you look at the squad that Jurgen Klopp inherited, we knew there were going to be difficult times in certain games.

The team had a hard week with all the travel and Palace are probably one of the sides you wouldn’t want to play on the back of that.

They have the front men to hurt you and we didn’t have enough energy to shut them down. We couldn’t get amongst them and we allowed them to bring their forwards into the game.

On the day they probably deserved it but I don’t think it was the worst display we’ve seen from Liverpool at home in recent months – it was below par but certainly better than the two league games against Palace last year when Liverpool were simply abysmal.

I don’t think there is any permanent damage and I’d expect the players to come back from the international break fully recharged.

Everything is still up for grabs

But there is a limit to how far you can take any football team and Jurgen Klopp is a football manager, not a magician.

He will want to move forward with a group of players, some of whom are already at Anfield and some of whom aren’t here yet.

I’d like him to do business in the January window because there’s everything to play for.

Even when you’re winning titles there will be games and afternoons like Palace and I think Liverpool’s only target for this season – the top four as I understand it – remains full on.

The longer everything that is going on at Chelsea continues the better it will be for Liverpool though Tottenham have finally looked like they’re getting somewhere.

For Klopp as a new manager he’ll instantly have identified something he can improve upon – he’ll be thinking ‘we’re missing this and I know where to go to get it’.

For me there’s nothing wrong if he wants to go back to Germany, Jurgen should work in the market he knows best.

He’s a fan of a strong running game and that’s something you get in the Bundesliga so the players from there will be used to that already.

There’s always a risk in signing any player but it always gives you a better feeling when you go back to something or someone you know.

I hope Lovren can hit the ground running

With Mamadou Sakho set to miss two months, we will be seeing a lot more of Dejan Lovren.

And I think we should all remember what we liked a lot when we saw him at Southampton.

Klopp has already had success by saying to Sakho, “Just be Sakho, nothing more” and I think he can do that again with Lovren - “Don’t try to be something you’re not”.

Of course what we’ve seen so far has not been good enough.

I really hope he hits the ground running because when you are playing well, you just want to play games and we are entering a period after Man City where it will be non-stop and there are a lot of winnable games for Liverpool.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed but I don’t think Klopp will be worried.

One thing he could perhaps be working on is our set pieces, after all we had five corner takers on Sunday. Set pieces are more important than they’ve ever been because clubs put so much effort into them.

For several years now I’ve thought we’re asking for corner and free kicks to be absolutely perfect. For me the best at the moment, Mesut Ozil at Arsenal, just puts the ball into a dangerous area where the goalkeeper can’t get it.

You see people with their arms up in the box. Forget that, just get it into a central area away from the goalkeeper and go from there.

Klopp has done well - a seven out of 10 so far

A month into his Anfield reign I think Jurgen Klopp has done a good job. I’d give him a 7/10 so far. I think we had an unbeaten run at the end of the Brendan Rodgers era but I think we now look like a team that could win more games and perhaps go on a run of wins.

I think he has views on a lot of things that are quite simple and that resonates with fans, like saying that we decide when we’re tired after the Kazan trip – that’s how fans think too.

On the leaving early debate I think he just wanted to get it out there, I don’t think it was a direct criticism of the fans. I think he just feels in the long-term it is something that will help the team and he wants to get over the message “we decide when it’s over”.

And of course they are the best moments – nothing compares to that feeling when you steal a game right at the end.