Jurgen Klopp has braced himself for a season of unexpected failure by admitting that even if Liverpool win their last five games they may not qualify for the Champions League next season.
Klopp is bidding for his first win in seven attempts at Old Trafford on Sunday in what he describes as Liverpool’s “most important game of the season” but victory will not paper over the cracks of a disastrous campaign when he says “nothing was perfect.”
Even if they reached their maximum of 70 points, Liverpool will still need other results to go for them to finish in the top four and there is even the possibility that fourth place may not be enough if Chelsea and Arsenal win the Champions League and Europa League respectively.
Liverpool could also fail to qualify for the Europa League and Klopp admits missing out on Europe will be a huge financial blow to the Merseyside club who have already lost an estimated £120m over the last year because of the consequences of Coronavirus pandemic.
“Playing Champions League is massive, especially from a financial point of view for the club,” he said. “It’s really important. If we cannot make that, then that’s not good. Definitely not.
“For sure, five wins will not be enough. It depends on how the other teams play obviously. but without five wins we don’t have a chance of ending up in any European competition so for us everything is clear.
“As long as we are not 15 points behind with only three or four games to go why should we write it off?
“United still think they can become champions and rightly so and we still think we can still go to the Champions League but we know we will need results in other games to go for us. We know without winning our own games we will go nowhere.”
Klopp however does not believe failure to qualify for the Champions League will have much impact on Liverpool’s transfer plans because like other top clubs who have been badly hit financially in the last year, the purse strings had already been considerably tightened.
“I don’t think it will change anything because the situation was difficult before and it is difficult after,” he added. “Football is in a difficult situation. I don’t think it will change a lot.”
The Liverpool manager has drawn four and lost two of his previous six visits to Old Trafford in all competitions – including a 3-2 FA Cup fourth round defeat in January – and was impressed by Manchester United’s second half demolition of Roma on Thursday evening.
“United looked pretty good – they turned the game around like they did 20 times this year,” he said. “They are coming up definitely everyone can see that, They deserve to be in the position they are in. They have won an awful lot of games.
“We are not that naive. We know we have to improve. If we wanted to become champions you need to be perfect and we were not perfect. The circumstances were not perfect, nothing was perfect actually, so it really clear pretty early on we weren’t going to be champions.”
Probable Liverpool team (4-3-3): Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Fabinho, Kabak, Robertson; Thiago, Milner, Wijnaldum; Salah, Firmino, Mane.
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