Klopp plays down talk of Liverpool decline

Liverpool were expected to be Manchester City's closest challengers for the Premier League title, but Klopp's side are ninth in the standings after 12 games.
 

Liverpool have lost players including Diogo Jota, Naby Keita, Luis Diaz and Joel Matip to injury while Darwin Nunez has struggled to justify his price tag after being signed as a replacement for Sadio Mane.

Saturday's 2-1 defeat by Leeds United, their first home league loss since March 2021, was another blow.

Klopp said there was no quick fix and urged patience as the team seeks to pick their season back up.

Q: "Are you ever concerned that this team might just have reached the end of its cycle and it's in decline now? Is that a concern?")

"So we are obviously out there and we do this job in public and I think the judgement for this will be later on in the season, or maybe at the end of the season where we say 'ok, that's obviously now, that's it for this group of players' or whatever, or for this manager if you want, whatever question will be asked then. But at the moment it's not 100% fair to judge the team because it means the squad obviously, because we never had them (players) available, we miss - especially now up front - top quality (players), which is not helpful, that doesn't mean the others don't have (players missing who are) top quality, but with the amount of games, we'd usually make changes but now we can't do that." said Klopp

"For sure we will not take risks, but we cannot.. if you watch football a little bit, international football, then you would probably will know that Napoli is in incredible shape, plays incredible football, are top of the table in Italy, maybe the team in form in Europe at the moment. So this is not a game for a massive rotation probably, it's not about whether we have to win 4-0 or whatever to go top of the group, we want to win the game obviously that's clear, but the result in the moment is not really important. So I have to make the line up later today, maybe tomorrow morning. We will see and then we'll go from there."

Liverpool have qualified for the Champions League knockout stages and are due to host Napoli in their final group game on Tuesday. They are second in Group A and can only secure top spot by beating the Italian side by four goals or more.

Asked if he will field his strongest line-up and attempt to thrash Napoli in order to win the group or rest players as they seek to fight their way back in the league, Klopp suggested they would try to beat Napoli without the scoreline being a major factor, and that rotations to rest some players will occur.