Monday 13 February 2017 17:30, UK
Liverpool midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum reckons the players put too much pressure on themselves in an attempt to halt a recent run of poor results.
Jurgen Klopp's team won just once in 10 matches between January 2 to February 4, against League Two side Plymouth, as Liverpool exited two cup competitions and dropped out of the top four for the first time since September.
Wijnaldum thinks focusing on trying to get themselves back on track actually had the opposite effect and it was only the defeat at Hull which proved to be the turning point which led to a first league win of 2017 over Tottenham at the weekend.
"We are hurting from every poor performance and every bad result. That is how it is. You have to go on," said the Netherlands international.
"I don't think we had the pressure of the title race, that came more from the outside.
"Of course you know if you have poor results it is more difficult to win the title but we still have second, third, fourth place and we must finish as high as possible at the end of the season.
"I think in some situations we put too much pressure on ourselves and that is why it went so wrong.
"If you have a few poor games in a row you are going to put pressure on yourself of 'We have to win this one or this and this will happen'.
"I think we were too busy thinking about the consequences than concentrating on the game.
"Last week we were only concentrating on Tottenham: how we can play against them, how we can hurt them and so on.
"The focus was different than a few weeks before. That is my opinion. There was a lot of pressure on us because only in the biggest games have we shown how good we are."
