Jurgen Klopp says Liverpool won’t catch Manchester City if they play like they did at Leicester | Football News

Jurgen Klopp “didn’t like” the way Liverpool played in their 1-0 defeat to Leicester and said they won’t catch Man City if they continue to play in the same manner.

Ademola Lookman came off the bench to consign Liverpool to the shock defeat after Mohamed Salah had a penalty saved.

It was a miserable night for Klopp’s side as they failed to close the six-point gap to Premier League leaders City and their wastefulness was to blame. City play twice before Liverpool’s next Premier League fixture on Sunday, January 2 against Chelsea, which could mean Klopp’s men will be 12 points behind the pacesetters if City stretch their winning run.

“Chelsea and us play against each other so we cannot both get the points,” he said.

“Sorry for that but it was not our plan tonight to give City the chance to run away or whatever.

“But if we play like tonight, we don’t have to think about catching up with City. But if we play our normal football, we can win normal football games.

“We have to see how many points we can get and we will see what that means.

“I don’t have a proper explanation for tonight but to find this explanation is my main concern and not, in this moment, the gap to City.

“I know it is easy to say but if we had won the game 2-1 I would not have liked the game anyway. Tonight, I did not like a lot in our football game. That is not cool.

“We have to do better, improve and go again.”

“We were just not really ourselves tonight,” he added.

“I think we started OK. I didn’t like 100 per cent the intensity even at the beginning but sometimes we have starts like this.

“We forced it a little bit too early, we crossed it a bit too early instead of taking the extra pass. We tried to change that at half-time but for some reason it did not click tonight.

“We were pushing but did not use the chances, missed free headers, all these things. In the end, I thought they deserved it.

“It is a nice story that a guy who is complaining about playing on the 26th and 28th only plays on the 28th and loses to a guy who had to play on the 26th and 28th.”

Rodgers: It was a heroic effort

Victory breathed fresh life into Leicester’s season as they rose to ninth and five points off the top six after a difficult December which had seen them win just one of their previous six games and drop out of the Europa League and the Carabao Cup.

They still needed Kasper Schmeichel at his best and the goalkeeper – who kept just his second clean sheet since the opening day – ensured they stayed in the game in the first half to earn revenge for their Carabao Cup defeat last week and eased the pain of conceding six goals in the defeat to Manchester City on Boxing Day.

“The players put in a heroic effort when you think of the recovery time against a team with so much power and athleticism,” boss Brendan Rodgers said.

“You don’t keep a clean sheet against Liverpool if everyone isn’t working. But it was the context of it after playing against Manchester City.

“We played a diamond for an hour to keep the threat in the side and then switched to 4-3-3 and showed resilience. [Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s] energy is remarkable and we needed that in the team. Him and Hamza [Choudhury] had to put in so much work.

“I just thought, you know, let’s go back to basics [with our set-piece defending]. An old school structure. Let’s defend properly. We did that tonight. The centre-halves were amazing but they all played their part. Collectively, we did really well.”

What’s next?

Leicester are back in action at the King Power Stadium on New Year’s Day – this Saturday for those losing track of the days – when they host bottom club Norwich City.

Liverpool’s next game is the following day when they travel to Stamford Bridge to take on title rivals Chelsea in what will be a huge Super Sunday game live on Sky Sports.