Klopp: It's a deserved defeat

Cape Town - Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp admits his players were not at their best in a 3-1 Premier League loss to Swansea City on Sunday.

Andre Ayew opened the scoring for the home side in the 20th minute to head Swansea into the lead before Jack Cork made it 2-0 13 minutes later with a stunning strike from outside the area.

Liverpool managed to get themselves back in the match through Christian Benteke's header in the 65th minute, but the hosts responded within two minutes, restoring the two-goal cushion as Andre Ayew netted his second for the day.

"It is a deserved defeat because of our performance today," Klopp told BT Sport.

"I think the only real chance was at 2-1, we were in the game, we had a better situation than in the first-half.

"In the first half we gave away a lot of easy balls, it was too easy for Swansea. We changed [at half-time], at 2-1 it was ok, but then [it was quickly] 3-1. It was not our day today."

The Swans took full advantage of the much changed Reds side as the former Borussia Dortmund mentor gave a number of youngsters a run in the starting line-up at Liberty Stadium.

Klopp believes they could have done better.

"The performance [was not good enough], effort was not the problem, we played like we played, we could have played much better with this line-up but we didn't."