Klopp: We won’t win title this season
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JURGEN KLOPP has conceded it’s extremely unlikely Liverpool will be champions this season — after only seven matches.
Klopp, who marked his seventh anniversary as Reds boss yesterday, thinks his players already have too much ground to make up on the pacesetters after dropping 11 points this season, including a 3-3 home draw against Brighton last weekend.
Defeat at Arsenal today would leave them 14 points behind Mikel Arteta’s team, albeit with a game in hand.
‘From this point, does it look like we will be champions at the end of the year? Unfortunately not,’ admitted the 55-year-old German.
‘Yes, this is a difficult time. Did I think we’d be ninth after matchday seven? No, because I don’t think about these sort of things.
‘But this is the place where we are now and we must go from here. If there is one club that has a chance to go through it then it’s us.’
Klopp is regarded as one of the managerial all-time greats and the first Liverpool boss to win the League Championship, European Cup, FA Cup and League Cup.
However, he admitted his future would be less secure at other clubs after an awkward start to the season.
‘You don’t have to do it the same way as all the others,’ said Klopp. ‘I know that with one point more Chelsea sacked Thomas Tuchel. It was said: “Tuchel gets sacked with ten points and Klopp stays in a job with nine points”.
‘So, you don’t have to ask me why that’s the case, but we still have the chance to still create something really special.’
Even if the league is a distant hope given the points accumulated by Manchester City and Arsenal, Klopp isn’t giving up hope for the season.
‘In all other competitions, we are not out yet,’ he said, with a midweek Champions League trip to Ibrox to face Rangers next on Liverpool’s agenda after today. ‘Nobody knows where we end up in the league, so just give it a go. That’s it. Difficult yes, impossible no. So let’s go from here.’
It’s unusual for Liverpool to be underdogs in any game but the bookmakers make Arsenal narrow favourites. Klopp’s team have been leaky at the back and at the other end last season’s Golden Boot winner Mohamed Salah has only a couple of league goals, his name supplanted in the headlines by a new King, Erling Haaland.
Salah’s general play has been decent but Klopp admits his Egyptian superstar won’t be satisfied until his name reappears on the scoresheet more regularly.
‘Mo wants to score goals. Definitely, desperately, 100 per cent,’ says Klopp emphatically. ‘That will never change. I hope he is close to exploding.
‘We are used to having a specific picture of Mo in our minds but he is a human being. We have to make sure that the team performs at a level where every player can be the best version of themselves.
‘With Mo, even if his goalscoring numbers are not that crazy, you see how often he is involved in the passes for goals.
‘The problem is that if he doesn’t score a goal, then no one appreciates that. Forget about him scoring or losing the ball here or there. He makes three or four key passes and that’s exceptional.
‘Nobody in the world can cope with the Haaland situation at this moment. It is crazy what he is doing. I don’t think we should compare anybody with Haaland at this moment.’
Meanwhile, Mikel Arteta wants his Arsenal side to have no fear when they take on Klopp’s men.
Liverpool pose the next test for Arteta’s young charges and their flying start to the campaign — and demanding boss Arteta has urged his young side to embrace the challenge.
He said: ‘To win those matches, you really need to believe that you can go there and win and compete against those teams.
‘If you don’t have that component then you have fear and fear is the worst enemy, especially against the top teams because this is what they use a lot of the time just to win matches.
‘You cannot go with any of that into a game like this.
‘The moment that you get momentum and you are in a good run and you can leave an opponent as far (behind) as possible, psychologically also it is really
important.’