Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has played down his side's struggles to beat the so-called lesser teams in the Premier League this season.
The Reds topped the top-six mini-league due to a string of impressive performances against the teams around them in the table, but they often slipped up in the matches that most expected them to win.
It was an issue which flared up in the opening weeks of the season, with victory over Arsenal being followed by defeat to Burnley, but Klopp does not believe that his side were lacking a 'Plan B' throughout the campaign.
"You win at Arsenal, it was outstanding, then you play Burnley, you lose it and nobody said it was a slip. Immediately everybody said, 'That always happens to us', [we] win such a big game and lose against a smaller side," he told the club's official website.
"To lose is already hard enough but to have the feeling 'That's our DNA', it's really sad, how can we change this? People said when we didn't beat the weaker teams that I have no Plan B.
"I have absolutely no problem, people can say what they want, but it's not about Plan B. We know exactly what to do, we did it so often. When we did it, it's normal, when we didn't do it, it's like we'll never learn it. [But] we scored the fourth most, only a few teams scored more than we did. It was all good."
Liverpool ended up finishing fourth in the Premier League table, qualifying for the Champions League for just the second time in the space of eight years.
Barney Corkhill
