Dejan Lovren: 'A Lot of Things Are Not Right' at Liverpool

Liverpool defender Dejan Lovren has taken aim at his teammates following the fortuitous win over Queens Park Rangers on Sunday 19 October.

The Reds moved into fifth place in the Premier League as Philippe Coutinho's strike and Steven Caulker's late own goal stifled a QPR comeback, after Eduardo Vargas had netted twice to seemingly claim Harry Redknapp's side a point.

But despite claiming a second straight league win, the performance was riddled with defensive errors, with Lovren and centre-back partner Martin Skrtel constantly troubled by Bobby Zamora, while both QPR goals came from lacklustre defending from crosses.

And Lovren believes he knows the reason behind the errors, claiming Liverpool are not united behind the current cause.

"A lot of things are not right at the moment but it will come," Lovren said. "We need to be more compact, to run more, we need to be like one player on the pitch, all together, to breathe the same. We need to improve and play more like a team.

"We have amazing individual players but we need to show it as a team. QPR was the first time in my career I was unhappy after the game, even though we won, because we didn't play good. I was glad it was over because one more minute and it would have been 3-3."

The shaky defensive performance came just days before facing Real Madrid in the Champions League, with the European champions having scored 30 league goals already this season.

Lovren said Liverpool must stage a dramatic improvement to compete with Real but is confident his teammates will step up to the challenge.

"This was not an easy game but one that we should have seen out comfortably, especially after taking the lead," he said. "We need to be better and in our next game against Real Madrid we need to show more.

"We will not play like that against Real Madrid, you can be sure of that. We will be better. We cannot play like this because we know what we can expect from Madrid. Their players, we know who they are and we will prepare a little bit differently."