Jurgen Klopp’s comments on Manchester City paint a bleak picture for Liverpool

Ahead of Manchester City’s trip to Anfield on Sunday, Jurgen Klopp says Liverpool simply ‘cannot act like them’ in the transfer market – ‘it is not possible’

Between them, they have won the last four Premier League titles. Two of them have been decided by a solitary point and, with a couple of different results against Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp would be a three-time champion of England. Liverpool face Manchester City again on Sunday and their meetings have merited the tag of title deciders. “Could be this year,” Klopp said. “Just not with us.”

He had ruled his side out of the title race even before they lost at Arsenal. Now the kings would have to become kingmakers to exert a decisive impact at the top. But defeat would leave them 16 points behind City; even in 2020-21, when they played the majority of a campaign without specialist senior centre-backs, they were only 17 adrift after 38 matches.

The gap now is a consequence of Liverpool’s sudden slide, of a loss of consistency and a habit of conceding first, of a series of injuries and a host of players operating at a level far below their best, of a pressing game that has malfunctioned and high-risk tactics that, when they backfire, can look very wrong. There may be the hangover and physical fatigue of a 63-game campaign last year and the cumulative toll of going toe-to-toe with City season after season.

On the field, there was precious little between them: a lone point over a four-year league table, tallies of 358 and 357 testament to their brilliance. Klopp and Guardiola has become a defining rivalry and the German’s total of 11 wins against the Catalan is unrivalled. On the balance sheet, however, Klopp feels it is an unequal contest.

He can be a generous opponent, branding City’s the planet’s best team, Guardiola its finest manager and Erling Haaland its outstanding striker. If City prove impervious to ferocious pressing, perhaps they will be killed by kindness, smothered by compliments; but for the players and coach. Klopp harbours different views about the broader project. His qualms lie with the way he feels the resources of states have been funnelled into clubs and distorted the landscape.

“Nobody can compete with City in that,” he said. “You have the best team in the world and you put in the best striker on the market, no matter what it costs you just do it.” If the counter-argument is that Darwin Nunez’s transfer fee is actually larger than Haaland’s, the City striker’s wages make him the bigger investment. Their respective goal returns – four for the Uruguayan, 20 for the Norwegian – amount to a colossal difference, even if Klopp attributes it in part to a general malaise in his team. “Let me say it like this, I think Darwin Nunez would have scored a couple more goals if he had played in the centre of Man City this season,” he said loyally. “He would be a pretty good striker for them as well, finishing the situations off.”

It is, though, about more than just individuals but a wider framework. Liverpool have boxed clever in the transfer market for years, selling well, signing relatively few players, rarely buying those established among the world’s top footballers, sometimes paying big fees, sometimes bringing in teenagers. But their model meant they had to be virtually flawless. City can adopt another approach.

“What does Liverpool do?” he asked rhetorically. “We cannot act like them. It is not possible. Not possible. It is just clear. We have to look at it [and say]: ‘We need that and we need that and we have to look here and make it younger, and here a prospect and here a talent’ and that is what you have to do.”

Liverpool's Darwin Nunez with manager Jurgen Klopp (Reuters)

Liverpool’s presence in three Champions League finals in five seasons and their trio of Premier League campaigns when they topped 90 points give them, along with Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and City, a claim to be the finest side of their era. In the financial league, however, their manager believes they are in the second tier, which exacerbates their footballing achievements. City’s ties to the United Arab Emirates, the buyout of Newcastle by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment fund and the Qatari ownership of Paris Saint-Germain have been game-changers; not in the sense of, say, Mohamed Salah, but in the resources supplied.

“There are three clubs in world football who can do what they want financially. It’s legal and everything, fine, but they can do what they want,” Klopp said. “I heard now that at Newcastle somebody [sporting director Dan Ashworth] said: ‘There is no ceiling for this club’. Yes; he is right. He is absolutely right. There is no ceiling for Newcastle. Congratulations, but some other clubs have ceilings.”

Liverpool raised their own ceiling, to 99 points, to continental glory, to a run of 35 wins in 36 league matches but it feels lowered again, with a title challenge ended in early October while their travails invite questions of when they will be upwardly mobile again. The contract Klopp signed earlier this year suggested an epic duel with City would be extended until 2026 and he vowed to carry on fighting. “It is not a problem at all for me, it’s like it is,” he said. Yet he painted a worrying picture for recent champions, and not merely by suggesting Newcastle could leapfrog them, with a bleak view of a two-tier world of clubs with limited and limitless spending.