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ESPN staff 7y

Jurgen Klopp defends Loris Karius after Jamie Carragher criticism

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was quick to shrug off criticism of goalkeeper Loris Karius after Liverpool's 4-3 defeat at Bournemouth on Sunday.

Karius, a £4.7 million summer signing from Mainz, has displaced Simon Mignolet as the club's No. 1 but has struggled to convince so far.

The German appeared to be at fault for two of Bournemouth's goals, firstly Ryan Fraser's 76th-minute strike that gave the home side hope before he spilled Steve Cook's 93rd-minute drive into the path of Nathan Ake for the winner.

Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher, working as a pundit for Sky Sports, was damning in his criticism of the 23-year-old.

"In eight starts for Liverpool he has not shown me one thing to suggest he's good enough at this level," Carragher said. "He's yet to convince me in any game. It's still early days but he would need a massive improvement. When your defence is under pressure, sometimes you need your goalkeeper to save it -- and he's miles away."

But Klopp was pragmatic about his goalkeeper's performance.

"If you make mistakes, you get criticised," Klopp said. "That's what happens in life. I'm sure people criticised Jamie Carragher in his career -- there was a reason, I'm not sure.

"If you want to say we're blind, we're silly, we're not good enough, do it. It has no influence on what I do to my team. You write it, I won't read it.

"We missed chances today, but do we have good strikers? Yes we do. The last goal wasn't easy for a goalkeeper. It says nothing about him as a goalkeeper. It happens. We go on."

Gary Neville, Carragher's fellow Sky pundit, also questioned Karius.

"It's tough to win the league without a good goalkeeper, it is tough," Neville said. "He's not good enough that goalkeeper. You could see actually in his first game ... was it against [Manchester] United on a Monday night? He looks nervous and he isn't good enough."

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