Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp says it is “not 100 per cent fair” to judge whether his team has reached the end of its successful cycle and that such an assessment should be made at the end of the season.
The Merseyside club is currently in ninth place, 15 points behind league leaders Arsenal and eight points off the top four after consecutive Premier League losses to Leeds and Nottingham Forest over the past two weeks. Both of those teams began their respective games with Klopp’s team in the relegation zone.
Klopp made a strong defense of his team’s recent play before Liverpool’s final Champions League group stage match against leaders Napoli, with the Reds needing to win by four goals to finish top of the group. Liverpool had only picked up four Premier League victories in its previous 12 games.
Upon being questioned about whether his team, Liverpool, which has won seven major trophies in the last three years, is starting to decline, Klopp responded, “The judgement of this will be later on in the season or maybe at the end of the season, where you say “that’s it” for the group of players or for this manager, if you want.
“Questions will be asked then. In this moment, it’s not 100 per cent fair to judge the team because that means the squad and we didn’t have [some of] them available.
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“Up front, we miss top quality. With the amount of games we have, you usually would make changes and we can’t do that. It’s a similar situation in midfield, players who are out and came back. We’ve had this pretty much everywhere.
“We expect more out of ourselves. The players expect more and I expect more out of them. But we have to make sure we get steps.”
