Jurgen Klopp makes new Man Utd 'blame' admission after Liverpool's title race blow

Jurgen Klopp has conceded Liverpool are out of the title race unless there is a ‘crisis’ at Manchester City or Arsenal.

The Reds’ 2-0 defeat by Everton in the Merseyside derby has shattered hopes of being crowned champions in Klopp’s final season as manager. Liverpool were deservedly beaten by their bitter foes at Goodison Park and it leaves them three points behind leaders Arsenal with four games remaining. City are a point behind the Reds but with two games in hand.

Liverpool have dropped eight points in their previous four league games, as well as crashing out of the Europa League quarter-finals at the hands of Atalanta. Klopp’s men have been profligate in the final third of late, with Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz spurning good chances against Everton while Mo Salah blazed two efforts well over the crossbar.

Klopp believes that his side are lacking composure in front of goal and it’s stemmed from a 2-2 draw at Manchester United earlier this month. The Liverpool boss said: “I understand it, it’s part of the business, but I don’t know why I have to answer this question – obviously you can read the table. So, should I say now we are still fully in? We need a crisis at [Manchester] City and Arsenal, and need to win football games, because if they start now losing all the games and we do what we did tonight, nothing changed. And we are not safe in the Champions League as well so we should just play better football.

“You can see we are in a rush in front of the goal, you can see that. It’s long ago but I blame a little bit the [Manchester] United game for it; that many chances and you play really good but you don’t get anything for it. That’s really bad. Since then, we create but we don’t score often enough and that doesn’t help. It’s not like in a situation like that you don’t score and then just [think], ‘Ah, forget it, who cares?’ You cannot act like you scored 15 goals in the last two games or whatever.

“You can see that and that’s a problem. It’s always like this: you have to fight through these periods, it was never different. People asked me already about mentality. The mentality has different aspects. It’s not a problem of attitude. The boys want; nobody is doing anything like that on purpose. It’s my job to bring them into a situation that they feel confident to do it. With that part, I’m responsible for everything that happened tonight, so it’s not that I feel great. But that’s the most tricky part of football obviously, and in the moment it didn’t work out and now we have to keep trying.