Jurgen Klopp indicated his Liverpool side produced somewhat of a bittersweet feeling in their Premier League opener on Sunday.

The Reds came from behind to defeat Arsenal 4-3 at the Emirates Stadium to kick off the campaign in winning style.

However, Klopp was critical of his players for allowing the Gunners to run the show early in proceedings before coming back to control the game, ahead of some late subpar play to let the home side back in.

"Scoring four goals is wonderful, conceding three is the opposite of that emotion," said the German.

"We didn't start well in the game. I saw what we spoke about, but I saw we did it with 50 per cent of being convinced about what we had to do.

"We had a high formation, but not a compact formation and that meant it was much too easy to play football between our rows in the spaces we gave them.

"The formation we chose was to close spaces, but what we did was [have] open spaces. That makes absolutely no sense and they [Arsenal] felt better and better and better and we [felt] not very good. We asked for the goal [against] and we got it. Then we came back in the game, had more direction and were even more compact."

He added: "We unfortunately did not really have counter-attack moments, which would have helped a lot, so there was pressure but not the highest pressure from Arsenal – I cannot remember big chances apart from the goals.

"So, it was hard work but a deserved win in the end. It feels brilliant at the moment, actually."

A sublime free-kick on the stroke of half-time from Philippe Coutinho levelled it up for the Reds after Theo Walcott's 31st-minute opener before Adam Lallana, Coutinho and Sadio Mane fired the visitors 4-1 in front.

Arsenal were able to hit back through Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Calum Chambers but the damage had already been done in North London.