The Liverpool head coach has been presented with a difficult path to the Premier League top-four and Champions League qualification. Ever the realist, per Jurgen Klopp – ‘We are not kids in a candy shop who are not getting the candies.”
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp insists they will not react to failing to secure a Champions League spot for next season. Instead, they will accept it as the rightful result of the merit that each team put in.
Fourth-placed Chelsea hold a seven-point advantage over seventh-placed Liverpool.
Fifth and sixth West Ham and Tottenham also have advantages over the Reds which are hard to bridge by season’s end.
Klopp – We Are Not Kids in a Candy Shop
Despite these stats, Klopp admits the task is a difficult, although not impossible, one.
Moreover, the prospect of relegating themselves from Champions League to Europa League would not get the 2019 European champions sulking.
“We are not kids in a candy shop who are not getting the candies,” he said.
Always brutally honest, Klopp put it straightforwardly: “We are responsible for the situation we are in and nobody will watch next season’s Champions League and lie in front of the television and cry if we are not involved.”
“If somebody would struggle with that, hopefully I would realise and I could solve that situation early,” he added. I am pretty sure I would recognise it early.”
“We still have a chance for the Champions League and we have to be concentrated on that,” he said, determined. “Some people obviously think we don’t have a chance any more so we should already write the season off.”
Klopp on His Players
Klopp hopes that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Thiago Alcantara, and Naby Keita, who have disappointed in the current campaign, return to form.
“Ox had really good moments, trains really good at the moment, and his situation is not easy, not only for him but all the boys in that situation,” he remarked.
“Thiago became, in a really difficult season, a very important player for us,” he said about Thiago, next. “I don’t think we saw it already but we are 100 per cent convinced we will get the best out of him because he is a world class player.”
He added: “For Naby, it’s not easy, for Shaq (Xherdan Shaqiri), it’s not easy and for some other players, it is not easy, I know that, but a lot of things happened during the season and what we tried to get and keep was balance and rhythm.”
The Liverpool head coach is optimistic that his injured players will return to fitness next season. Indeed, this season, an injury crisis, especially in the defence, hit Liverpool which prevented them from defending their EPL title.
