Jurgen Klopp insisted they were focused on qualifying for the Champions League and not about winning the league when Manchester City were 14 points ahead in the Premier League.
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp insisted that the only thing on their mind was to qualify for the Champions League when City was 14 points ahead on the League table.
The German stated that they had the mind of ‘if they can not be Champions then they will have to qualify for the Champions League’.
Liverpool are now top of the table after their 2-0 victory over Watford in the Premier League, though Manchester City have a game at hand which will be played later today.
The Reds were in brilliant form and had the chance to close the 14 points gap between themselves and City in the Premier League.
When asked about the believed they had to keep them chasing Manchester City in the League Klopp said: “ We didn’t have a lot of opportunities or alternatives to do it differently. Because we are 14 points behind City, that means you are in trouble with qualifying for the Champions League if the others are not 15 points away as well, or 20 points.
“That was the reason. If you cannot become champions, we have to qualify for the Champions League and that’s why there was no reason to think about anything different. And the rest came then. We had no influence in that, we had no chance to influence City’s games since then. I saw some of them; even when they didn’t win, the performance level was incredible. So we didn’t really think about it.
“We wanted to qualify for the Champions League, we wanted to come in the cup competitions as far as possible and if possible win it, of course. The rest just happened while we were trying to play the best football possible. Today we didn’t obviously play the best football possible but it was good enough to be a deserved win of a football game and that must be sometimes just enough.
“I was really happy today with the whole stuff, we came through. I didn’t expect for one second we will be flying today but we had good moments, lesser-good moments, once where we needed Ali, two nice goals and all good.”
Joe Gomez had an incredible performance in the absence of Alexander- Arnold who is just recovering from hamstring injury.
Gomez got an assist in the game by setting up Diogo Jota goal in the first half of the game.
Speaking about Gomez performance Klopp said: “He did really well and he could have set up a second goal in the second half, the cross was an incredible one as well. Defensively we don’t have to talk, offensively some really good moments and some not-so-good moments because you see the positioning against a deep-sitting opponent, it is not so easy to find the right position in these moments and we are usually a bit more flexible, but it’s all fine.
“Joe is an outstanding football player and he will play a lot of games during his career, 100 per cent, he will play here a lot of games definitely. This season was tricky so far for him, but who knows how these things can change. He is obviously ready to use the opportunity when he gets it.”
