JURGEN KLOPP HAS defended Christian Benteke’s form after the Belgian extended his barren run in Liverpool’s defeat to West Ham in the FA Cup last night.

Angelo Ogbonna scored in the last minute of extra-time to seal a 2-1 victory for the Hammers at Upton Park after Philippe Coutinho’s clever free-kick had cancelled out Michail Antonio’s first-half opener.

But it was another frustrating night for Benteke, who managed nine shots against the Hammers but constantly fluffed his lines, extending his spell without a goal to 11 games.

“Ask 80 to 90% of all strikers in the world – high-quality, low-quality, no-quality – they will tell you they’ve had times like this,” said Klopp.

It’s like it is and you have to carry on. You have to go on, there’s no other situation. All the people in the world want the easy goal, but then the easy goal doesn’t help, so you have to play, you have to improve, you have to want to do all the things – that’s how it always is. It’s no different for Christian.

“But tonight, it was a really good game without the maximum finish, but he did a lot, he worked a lot, so it was a big step – that’s good for us and that’s good for him.”

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