Jurgen Klopp rules Liverpool out of Premier League title race

Jurgen Klopp has said he doesn't think Liverpool can win the Premier League title this season, after another disastrous weekend for the Reds saw them fall 13 points behind leaders Manchester City.

Klopp's team looked in control of their game against Leicester on Saturday and took the lead with 20 minutes remaining, after some wonderful combination play by Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah.

But their fragile mentality was soon exposed yet again; James Maddison, Jamie Vardy and Harvey Barnes all struck within the space of seven minutes to put the Foxes six points ahead of the defending champions.

Man City can extend their lead over Liverpool to 16 points should they win their game in hand - the same amount of points they have dropped in their opening 23 games - and Klopp reckons that is too much to ask of his players.

Speaking to reporters after the game, as quoted by the BBC, he said: "I don't think we can close the gap. We are not worrying about the title, we are not silly."

Liverpool will instead focus on finishing in the top four, which looks enough of a challenge as they continue to make things difficult for themselves. The Leicester defeat was their third on the spin in the league, the first time that has happened since 2014, and left Klopp scratching his head.

Liverpool controlled the game for long spells, but after Maddison's equaliser they were undone by a huge error from Alisson, who came careering out of his goal to clear the ball and missed it completely. They lacked the fight to get back into the game from there, and while Klopp was reluctant to pick apart their performance as a whole, he was left hugely concerned by another damaging defeat.

"We have to win football games and big parts of the football were really good.

"We scored a great goal but conceded a strange one and I think it's offside, and the [goal for] 2-1 is a misunderstanding. That had too big an impact on the game. We had to show a different reaction, and the third we gave away too easily.

"We have to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings. Today we didn't do that. The rest of the game was really good. First we have to perform again - results are massively related to the performance."


Source : 90min