Arne Slot admitted Liverpool had only themselves to blame after suffering their first Premier League defeat of the season in dramatic fashion.
Substitute Eddie Nketiah struck in the seventh minute of stoppage time to hand Crystal Palace a 2-1 victory over the champions at Selhurst Park on Saturday.
The Reds looked to have rescued a point when Federico Chiesa came off the bench to cancel out Ismaila Sarr’s early opener with just three minutes remaining.
However, Arne Slot criticised his side’s failure to defend a long throw in the dying seconds, as Nketiah capitalised on space left by Jeremie Frimpong to convert Marc Guehi’s flick-on.
“We can only blame ourselves by defending as we did,” said the Liverpool boss. “One of our players decided to run out as he wanted to play on the counter-attack, which was no use as time was out.
“It was only about defending at that point and maybe one player was too offensively-minded at that moment and it led to them scoring the winner and us losing the game.
“It was in extra time of extra time what we conceded, which I think was fair as they made a sub and I assume they scored between 96 minutes and 96 minutes 30 seconds.”
He added: “Palace deserved to be up by two or three goals in the first half. They created three of four very good chances and we were lucky Alisson helped us.
“The second half was much better for us than the first half, we created chances which not many teams do here.
“It took a while for us to score a goal but to then concede another set-piece goal was disappointing in the end.
“But if one team deserved to win today it was Palace.”
“Against Newcastle we conceded from two set-pieces, which were the only two chances. Here Palace had chances from open play and transitions, so there were more things not to like.
“Palace have a number of threats, counter-attack is one of them and from all these situations they created a lot of chances.
“Once again, credit to Palace, not for the first time we have lost to them, although it was on penalties in the Community Shield.
“We have played each other four times since I’ve been here, we have both won one and twice a draw so it tells you how difficult it is for us and every team in the league to beat them.”
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