Klopp raps Dyche over cheating slur
JURGEN KLOPP has hit back at Sean Dyche in their war of words and insisted that Daniel Sturridge is “not a cheat”.
Burnley manager Dyche responded to Klopp’s complaints about Burnley’s tackling during Liverpool’s victory on Wednesday by accusing Sturridge of diving.
Klopp, who has lost Joe Gomez for six weeks with a fractured tibia suffered in a challenge by Clarets captain Ben Mee, said: “Daniel Sturridge is not a cheat.
“Sean is the kind of person to bring up another subject but I’m not sure if he spoke about Phil Bardsley against Alberto Moreno.
“After the game he talked about one situation where a player went down without contact.
“I don’t know how the referee judged it but it’s a normal situation, which can happen. Sometimes a striker expects a tackle and you try to avoid that by jumping. That’s how it is.
“He wants to discuss Daniel. I can’t avoid that but on the other side I said what I had to say about that after the game.
“Yeah, different opinions are allowed.”
Dyche did in fact acknowledge afterwards that the challenge by Bardsley on Moreno was questionable.
Even though they were 1-0 down, Liverpool hit back to win 3-1 at Turf Moor and Klopp claims his side are not disheartened to be trailing Manchester City by two points despite their record start.
Liverpool’s return of 12 victories and three draws is better than they managed in the first 15 games of all their 18 title-winning campaigns, the last of which was in 1990 before the First Division had been rebranded to become the Premier League.
Ahead of today’s trip to Bournemouth, Klopp says that he expects City to win every game – apart from when they play Liverpool – and has told his players they must focus on themselves. “How can you moan about that?” said Klopp. “The only job we have to do is collect as many points as we can and then you have to see. We cannot do more.
“It is absolutely not a problem for us that we go in the dressing room and see the Manchester City result and they have won again.
“It’s not like, ‘Oh, City won again’. We expect them to win all the time apart from the games against us.
“We have only to try to play the best season we can play, whatever that means. In this difficult period you have to focus completely on your own performance.
“You cannot play against two teams – the one on the other side of the pitch and the one in your mind. That doesn’t work.
“Whatever they get at the end of the season they probably deserve. It will be the same for us.”
Klopp says he is not interested in engaging City manager Pep Guardiola in mind games and says he does not know if City are feeling any pressure from Liverpool. “You would have to ask them what it means for them,” he said. “I know Pep obviously, but not good enough to say how interested he is in what we are doing or what other teams are doing.
“The good thing with this number of games in a short period is we have a lot of opportunities to win. We will try that. The week coming up now is crazy – Bournemouth, Napoli and Man United.
“That’s a massive week again and we have already had a few. That’s our life and we love it.”