The manager of Liverpool football club, Jurgen Klopp has stressed that Liverpool would not behave like kids that couldn’t get candies at a candy shop if they fail to qualify for next season’s UEFA Champions League.
Liverpool came into the 2020-2021 Premier League season as the league’s champions and played as one until towards the first half of the season when things began to fall apart for them.
Coach Jurgen Klopp had to struggle to put a team together for the Premier League campaign after most of his top players including Jordan Henderson, Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, Joel Matip, and Fabinho were injured in the course of the season which became a big blow to the club.
Since most of the star players that sustained different degrees of injuries were defenders, Liverpool had to struggle with different combinations of center-backs which did not yield the expected result.
Hence, the performance of the team declined and affected the club’s position on the league table. It got so bad for Liverpool that they slid from the top spot on the league table to the 7th spot.
They are currently outside the top four with 54 points in 33 games, 7 points away from 4th placed Chelsea but with an outstanding game which will be against second-placed Manchester United.
Later today, May 8, 2021, at 20:15, Southampton will visit Anfield Stadium to play against Liverpool in one of the last five games the reigning Premier League champions must win to stand a chance of qualifying for next season’s Champions League.
Ahead of the Premier League game between Liverpool and Southampton, the coach of the Merseyside club, Jurgen Klopp said: “We are not kids in a candy shop who are not getting the candies.
“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 realize and I could solve that situation early. I am pretty sure I would recognize it early.
“We still have a chance for the Champions League and we have to be concentrated on that.
“Some people obviously think we don’t have a chance anymore so we should already write the season off.”
Meanwhile, the German coach has started looking forward to next season as he hopes Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Thiago Alcantara, and Naby Keita would improve ahead of next season.
“The summer is important for all of us and you can say exactly the same about each player,” Klopp said.
“When you don’t start games, you have to use each training session and each minute on the pitch to convince.
“I don’t have to be convinced to be honest but it’s about showing up in these kinds of situations.
“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.
“Thiago became, in a really difficult season, a very important player for us.
“I don’t think we saw it already but we are 100 percent convinced we will get the best out of him because he is a world-class player.
“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 were balance and rhythm.
“With always having a different defense, a few things in midfield needed to be different to other times when we were much more settled and stable, and that is the reason why some players don’t have enough minutes.
“That will hopefully change next year completely because when you have more stability in the last line then you can be more flexible formation-wise further up the pitch.”
📋 Latest #LIVSOU team news from the boss ⤵️
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) May 8, 2021
