Valverde: "We have to keep going"

Ernesto Valverde is confident Athletic Club will get back to winning ways sooner rather than later and urged his players to keep working hard.

Despite outplaying Real Madrid, Los Leones fell to 0-2 defeat in Bilbao on Sunday night - the visitors twice striking against the run of play.

"There is no point in complaining. Football is about creating goalscoring situations and scoring them," the gaffer said post match.

"The team is in the same shape as before the break, but we haven't won and those points don't come back. We have to keep going and be more clinical in front of goal. We've always been close to winning."

Valverde insisted the scoreline didn't reflect the pattern of the game but accepted that Real Madrid were more effective in the final third than his Lions.

He said: "They were very efficient. They never let you off the hook and they punch hard in the final metres.

"They scored the first goal when we were on top. It was a blow and we struggled to recover in the ten minutes after, but we finished the first half well.

"In the second half we threw ourselves at it to see if we could get the equaliser and we went close. If you watched the whole game, leaving out the goals, and had to guess the result, you wouldn't think it was 0-2