James Milner believes Liverpool are struggling to find their 'rhythm' after they slumped to a 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest earlier today.
The Reds failed to capitalise on a chance to climb up to fifth in the Premier League, with Taiwo Awoniyi's 55th-minute goal lifting Forest off the bottom of the table and condemning Jurgen Klopp's side to their third league defeat of the season. The Liverpool boss made five changes from the side that beat West Ham on Wednesday, with Thiago taken ill and Darwin Nunez nursing a minor muscle problem.
Those changes showed, with Liverpool unable to make the most of their possession and often careless on the ball. Fabinho and Joe Gomez gave away possession 30 times between them, while the likes of Fabio Carvalho and Mohamed Salah spent much of the game pushed to the fringes.
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Speaking after the final whistle, Milner - who started at right-back in place of Trent Alexander Arnold - admitted that today's defeat is a 'big setback' for a side who were starting to find their form.
"Disappointing from our point of view," Milner told Viaplay. "We had chances to end the game and didn't take them, we gave them too many chances. Credit to them but we're obviously disappointed, having had a couple of good results and getting a bit of momentum just to give it away again.
"It's a big setback but we have to make sure it doesn't set us back further than that. We have to react, recover and go again in a couple of days."
Asked to explain the manner of the defeat, the 36-year-old pointed at yet more injuries to first-team players and the loss of rhythm that inevitably comes with such wholesale changes.
"It's not easy with all the injuries," Milner added. "You have new players every game but it's the same for every team. We're in a busy period, we have had a lot of injuries for whatever reason, so it's tough but that's part and parcel of it.
"We have a squad full of good players but when you're not sure who is going to be fit and players can't get a rhythm it does make it difficult. But that's what we've been used to over the last few years.
"We play so many games and we have a lot of experienced players so we have to deal with it better than we are currently."
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