Liverpool will cope without Anfield

LIVERPOOL. — Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes his runaway English Premiership football leaders will cope without the “best kick in your a*s” from their Anfield crowd should the Premier League season resume.

English top-flight players are set to be back in training this week after a Premier League meeting on Monday gave the go-ahead to the first stage of the return to play protocols.

If matches do eventually take place again this season, they will be behind closed doors and possibly at neutral venues. Liverpool were left 25 points clear at the top of the table when the coronavirus saw the season suspended in April.

They now need just two more wins to claim a first English title in 30 years and German boss Klopp, having watched his native Bundesliga resume last weekend without spectators at matches, is confident his players can motivate themselves without a crowd.

“The competition will make the intensity,” he told Liverpool’s website.

“So it’s not about ‘oh, Liverpool have to win two games’.

“By the way, we have to win two games when we start — it’s not ‘only two’, it’s two. We have to win them.”

Former Borussia Dortmund manager Klopp added: “We have to do it, unfortunately, without the best boost in the world and the best kick in your ass in the right moment in the world, from the Anfield crowd. “But that’s how it is. It’s 100 percent (that) the perfect package of football is a full, packed Anfield stadium, two really good teams, big fight, super goals and at the end Liverpool win. That’s the perfect matchday.

“So, a lot of these things are possible but Anfield will not be packed for a while . . . We love that but we cannot have it. — AFP.