Jurgen Klopp has told his faltering Liverpool players they cannot start feeling sorry for themselves - and cited Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford as a prime example of how they can recover their form.
A number of first-team regulars have been way below their best this season with the Reds' defence of both domestic cups ending in the early rounds and last season's Premier League runners-up slumping a whopping 10 points off the Champions League qualification places at the halfway point of the top-flight campaign.
Klopp declared he was unhappy with the body language of several of his players following last Sunday's FA Cup fourth round defeat at Brighton and Hove Albion.
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And, ahead of Saturday's Premier League visit to Wolverhampton Wanderers, the Liverpool boss has told his under-performing stars to look towards Old Trafford for inspiration, with Rashford having scored 18 goals in 31 appearances already this season compared to five in 32 over the whole of the previous campaign.
"We all see (this season) that some players didn't exactly reach the level they reached for us consistently over four or five or six years," said Klopp. "That's not unusual, it happens to other players as well.
"One of the best examples ever probably will be Marcus Rashford. The season he had last year and the season he has this year, I'm not sure he can really explain it. Erik ten Hag coming in, new boys, a different approach, of course (makes a difference) but it's not as though Marcus didn't want to deliver last year. Now he is flying. That's how it goes.
"The times in between these two extremes we have to use and go through it and fight through it. Self-pity is not allowed in these moments. We are human beings and know these moments when you think 'oh my God, everything is going against me'. There's only one person who can change that really and it's yourself. These kind of things can happen and will happen in the future as well, but it's about limiting the time to get back on track."
Klopp added: "The team can help with that. The team performances are obviously a summary of the individual performances, but the other way around it works as well. The individual performances are influenced massively by the team performance. Sometimes the team helps you through these kind of things, and when you have one or two or three of these performances (from players) then it becomes more and more difficult.
"That doesn't change the view on the players in general. But you have to make decisions for the moment for the line-up, and that's maybe a bit more of a problem for the manager because when you realise that's not only a little dip and it is going on longer, do we have alternatives?
"For the player it's a situation which he will face during a long career. Not only once but probably two or three times. You have to get through this and the players I know, my players, they will go through that and show again how good they are."
Neither Fabinho nor captain Jordan Henderson have featured in the starting line-up for the last three games, the first time that has happened since the former made his Liverpool debut in September 2018.
The Brazilian produced an alarming cameo from the bench at Brighton last Sunday after which the referees' body PGMOL admitted the midfielder should have been sent off for a poor challenge on Evan Ferguson.
And Klopp said of Fabinho: "We don't have arguments on the pitch or the training ground, not at all. He knows that he is not flying and has to work his way back. It's now really helpful that we have Stefan (Bajcetic), to be honest. He is doing really well and you need in this position the guy who wants to win challenges, protects everybody and who plays football as well. That's really important.
"Fab did that for us for plenty of years, absolutely brilliant, the best in his position for a long time, and in the moment it's not clicking. You have to go through that. He's now not the happiest person on the planet but he understands the decision, obviously."
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