Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has ruled out his side’s chances of breaking into the Premier League top four following their 2-1 win over West Ham on Wednesday.
The Reds made it three league wins in a row in London on Wednesday, returning from an early 1-0 deficit to win 2-1 thanks to pals from Coady Gakpo and Joel Matip.
The result took them six points behind the top four teams, although Manchester United and Newcastle both have games in hand. As such, Klopp is reluctant to put his team in the mix just yet.
After the game, Klopp told reporters:
“I can’t see the race yet; I can’t. That’s because we are not in the position for a race. So the only thing we can do is keep winning football games. If that puts pressure on other teams, that’s not in our hands because we don’t play them.
“We play Tottenham – that’s it from that area, I think, of teams above us. If they win all their games, that’s it for us. But I don’t think about that.
“I want us to finish the season as good as somehow possible. I want to take something out of the season for next year. If that is European competition, great. If not, we have to accept it as well and go from there. That’s what I want now.”
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The Liverpool manager added that he is looking for his side to show their real face from their six remaining fixtures.
“I want us, at least for a few weeks, [to] show our real face – and not the nice one, the ugly one, the nice one, the ugly one. It’s really tough to do that. So now we did it for kind of three games – three-and-a-half, the second half against Arsenal was brilliant as well – all in a different way.”
“Tonight, the first half I liked the most for a long, long time, like the way we controlled the game,” he continued.
“We played here plenty of times; it’s always tough. Result-wise, it looked better from time to time, but the goals we scored were then counter-attacks, stuff like that, quick reacting, all these kinds of things. We controlled the game in a way we never did before against West Ham, and I really liked that.”
Liverpool return to Premier League action on Sunday when they host Tottenham, with Klopp’s side having already climbed above Spurs on goal difference.
