Jürgen Klopp: It's great, but it's business as usual for us
It will be 'business as usual' for Liverpool regardless of the outcome of Sunday's top-of-the-table clash with Manchester City, Jürgen Klopp explained.
With just one point separating them in the Premier League table and eight games left to play, the sides meet at Etihad Stadium this weekend.
Having already added the Carabao Cup to their trophy cabinet, the Reds are also chasing success in the Champions League and Emirates FA Cup as the season enters its defining phase.
Nevertheless, Klopp outlined during the second part of his pre-City press conference on Friday morning why Liverpool won't deter from their one-game-at-a-time mentality no matter what happens in Manchester on Sunday.
Read on to see what the boss had to tell reporters…
On coming from 14 points behind to reduce the gap to just one ahead of Sunday and if that creates any pressure...
First of all, I know it was 14 points but we had two games in hand - I think it was Leeds and Arsenal, our two games in hand. Away at Arsenal is not a game where you can count the points directly in and Leeds at home is obviously not as well. I don't know, I am not sure I have ever been 14 ahead and then all of a sudden only one, I really don't remember. I wouldn't imagine they feel more under pressure, to be honest. It's like, focus on yourself, knowing about the situation, looking at the form you are in. I think that's all OK, but I cannot answer your question. We are not in this situation, I cannot remember being in this situation; maybe I was but then I forgot it.
That's not an aspect I am thinking about, let me say it like this. It is not that I think they are more under pressure than us - they play at home, they are calm and decisive in most of the games they play and we have to be as well. It is an important game - a very important game - but actually, how we now realised in the beginning, there is a season after this game and these games are as important as the others. Our programme is insane; we play City, Benfica, City, United and Everton. They all will hope if we win one of the City games we will celebrate for three or four days, but we will not. For us, it is very exciting, very interesting, I am really looking forward to it, but it is business as usual as well. It is just a big game, which we had now since when we started our chase properly - all the games were finals and this is no different.
On the statistic of Liverpool amassing just one Premier League point fewer than Manchester City since the start of 2018-19...
It's great. I am surprised about the numbers, to be honest, but it's massive, it's big. As I said, they wouldn't have had the points they've had if we wouldn't be there and the other way around the same. We obviously pushed each other properly. That's the truth, it's nice. If somebody would have asked me four years ago in 2018 or whenever, 'Do you think it's possible?', that we are that close with them, I would have said not really. I know how people see us and them - yes, they talk about us as a good team and all these kind of things, but City is considered as the best football team in the world and they got one more point than us, what does that say exactly?
To be 100 per cent honest, I think they are the best football team in the world but they have only one point more than us in this time, so obviously we did something right. I know that and I am happy about that, but it would be better if we had 20 points more in that period, then we probably would have one more title or one more [piece of] silverware and all these kind of things. It's all fine how it is, that's the basis we created so let's go from there.
On whether he feels Liverpool are City's 'equals' now...
Equal? I am not sure. The main difference between Dortmund and Bayern and Liverpool and City is at Dortmund we lost important players every year and Bayern never. If you leave Bayern then it is pretty much because you retire or finish your career and stuff like this, or you don't play at all - or it was was like this, at least. If you played an outstanding season at Dortmund, there are a lot of clubs who would be interested and very often it was Bayern themselves, so that's the difference in the situation. That's why we could build here and we are much more equal at least than we were with Bayern.
That's definitely the case, because we could just develop then, we could build on what we did the years before. We had this last year, which was not great, but even that we could build on because we knew why it happened. I don't care if we are 'equal' but we are much closer than we were with Dortmund, that's for sure.