Dejan Lovren on how Liverpool FC can stop surrendering half time leads

Dejan Lovren admitted Liverpool paid a heavy price for switching off as Newcastle fought back to force a 2-2 draw at Anfield.

The Reds appeared to be cruising to a fifth successive win in all competitions following first-half goals from Daniel Sturridge and Adam Lallana.

However, Simon Mignolet's blunder allowed Papiss Cisse to pull one back early in the second half and more slack defending enabled Jack Colback to restore parity.

" At half-time we need to think like it's 0-0," Lovren said.

"We started really poorly in the second half, so I think they deserved their point.

"It's like us against Dortmund, it's the same thing, everything is in your head. If you want to, you can score another two goals. We had chances after that but we didn't score.

"We are not satisfied. We had a good result at half-time, 2-0, and we didn't concentrate for the first goal.

"We knew it would be tough because they're fighting for their lives and at the end they had two shots at goal and two goals.

"We're disappointed because we started very well, first half we played well and showed our qualities again, and I think we need to learn from this."

Lovren believes the return of Philippe Coutinho and Nathaniel Clyne to the starting line up will help Liverpool sharpen up ahead of Thursday's Europa League semi-final first leg away to Villarreal.

"We will have a couple of lads back," he told Liverpoolfc.com.

"I think we will be in good shape so we need to just move on and forget about today's performance."[liverpoolecho]

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