For any doubters, Klopp clears it up

PITCH too dry, wind too strong, grass too long, too much snow, the list goes on.

He is probably not on his own but Jurgen Klopp (below) is an obsessive when it comes to pondering conditions for football matches.

Ahead of his first game at Goodison Park, he suggested the surface might need a trim; it was a bit breezy for his liking during the FA Cup defeat at Molineux last month and draws at West Brom last season and at home to Southampton towards the end of the 2016-17 campaign were influenced by a lack of water on the ground, apparently.

The draw with Leicester City on Wednesday was also influenced by conditions, it seems. The snow got in the way.

So the Anfield groundsmen took a bit of action at half-time and cleared the final third of the pitch at the end Liverpool would be attacking.

The snow was left untouched at the end Leicester would be sporadically attacking.

It was such a ham-fisted ploy, it was laughable.

Klopp, of course, was NOT behind the clumsy, unsportsmanlike tactic.

“I never asked to clear one side of the pitch and not the other. That is not how I understand sport,” he said.

YOU almost have to love the Premier League’s muscleflexing tendencies. Schedule a humdinger of a fixture – Manchester United v Liverpool – on the day of the Carabao Cup final.

If one of those teams had made the final, no problem. Prime fixture gets rearranged for a prime midweek date towards the end of the season.

If not, Manchester United v Liverpool takes some of the spotlight from the EFL competition.

Ditto for March 15/16, FA Cup quarter-final weekend and every chance one of Manchester City or United – or both – will be involved. If not, their league derby goes ahead.

And there are some who still believe in fixture-list randomness.