Brentford manager Thomas Frank has conceded he was "irritated" by what he saw from his players at Anfield as Liverpool put three past the Bees with no reply.
Goals from Fabinho, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Takumi Minamino were enough to separate the two sides as Jurgen Klopp's Reds leapfrogged Chelsea into second-place after the Blues were beaten away at Manchester City on Saturday.
Frank's side put up a convincing fight for much of the first-half, before Fabinho nodded home for Liverpool's opener in the 44th minute after Brentford allowed Trent-Alexander Arnold's cross to bounce inside the box.
The Bees boss was left to rue what might have been after his goalkeeper Alvaro Fernandez gifted the hosts their third and final goal of the game after some more defensive carelessness.
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Brentford failed to recreate the kind of display that saw them take a point off of Liverpool in the season's earlier meeting between the pair but Frank did cite some positives from his team's performance.
"It’s not the first time a team has lost 3-0 at Anfield, but it’s irritating me a lot because especially the third goal was completely avoidable and should never happen," he said.
"I thought we played 60 very good minutes. Unbelievable, well structured, very good discipline, brave when we wanted to go high under pressure, defended low very well and put bodies on the line when needed.
"We gave nothing away in open play, they had a few half-chances on set-pieces and then we began to create more and more dangerous situations."
Frank went on to highlight to where he thought his side went wrong.
"Then we conceded on a set-piece. That should never happen. If you want to get a good result against a world-class team, one of the best in the Premier League, you can never concede on a set-piece," he added.
"Unfortunately we did that. I said to Jurgen I would love to have seen what would have happened had it been nil-nil at half-time.
"We had a chance through Mbuemo and then they scored for 2-0 and it was a done deal."
The German admitted that defending set-pieces has been an issue for his side in recent weeks after a promising start to life in the Premier League.
"If you want to be a good team in the Premier League I think you need to be able to do all the phases.
"But if you are a newly-promoted team then you need to be very good at defending set-pieces.
“You can’t concede soft goals. I felt that in the first 10-15 games we were brilliant but for whatever reason we’ve then been conceding from set-pieces where we could do better."
The result had knock-on effects at both ends of the table, as Liverpool made slight ground in their pursuit of top-spot while Brentford saw Leeds United close the gap between them.
