Liverpool defender Andrew Robertson said “this season has been nowhere near good enough” after the holders crashed out of the FA Cup at the hands of Brighton.
Jurgen Klopp’s men lost their fourth-round tie 2-1 at the Amex Stadium despite taking a lead through Harvey Elliott.
Lewis Dunk levelled before the break and Kaoru Mitoma’s brilliant control and finish in stoppage time earned the Seagulls a place in the fifth round.
Liverpool, who went close to winning a historic quadruple last season, are already out of the League Cup and are languishing in ninth place in the Premier League.
Robertson said the result was “bitterly disappointing”.
“At a club like Liverpool, fans expect a lot and to lose with the last kick of the ball, it’s disappointing,” he told ITV. “We need to start winning games. It’s easy to say but harder to fix.
“This season has been nowhere near good enough. At the start of the year we wanted a fresh start but that hasn’t happened. We’ve been worse. In the league we haven’t been good enough and now we’re out of both cups.
“You can’t put your finger on one thing, it’s more than that. You can tell we’re not as confident in front of goal and in defence we are a wee bit open. We had two clean sheets coming into today but then go and concede two goals.”
The Scotland international said the team needed to get their confidence back, adding that they had let down the fans again.
Liverpool lost 3-0 to Brighton earlier this month in a Premier League match Klopp described as a “horror show”.
The Liverpool boss was unhappy with his team’s defending on Sunday.
“We came here after a game a few weeks ago when we weren’t even close to ourselves,” he told the BBC.
“Today we played a better game but we concede two goals from set-pieces and that is not allowed in any way.”
