Jürgen Klopp has promised Manchester City a fight to the end for the title after his Liverpool side made up ten points on the Premier League leaders since the turn of the year.
His side won a ninth straight league match and recorded a 17th clean sheet after they beat Arsenal 2-0. Diogo Jota was about to be taken off before he struck and Roberto Firmino added a second and his ninth goal against the London club in all competitions.
Liverpool took full advantage of City’s goalless draw away to Crystal Palace on Monday to move within a point of them before the teams meet on April 10 at Etihad Stadium. “I would prefer to be 20 points in front,” Klopp said. “We play City and then we will give them a proper fight. I don’t think a lot about City. I know the only chance we have is to win an incredible amount of games because our opponents do. In the last few years we’ve pushed each other on insane levels. It makes each game a final. You can enjoy that for sure but it’s intense, then comes the physical part and you are tired.
“We’ve had a good period. It’s what we need. We have to win matches. We know we have a special group here and we’re trying to squeeze everything we can out of the situation. In ten years, do you think somebody will say you should be proud [of finishing second by one point]? Probably not.”
Klopp paid tribute to his team’s endurance and stamina as they had played six times more than Arsenal since beating them in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg at Emirates Stadium. “A rhythm is good but a rhythm is playing every four days, three days. It is a rhythm but it is an intense one, we are not complaining, we want to be in all competitions,” he said. “We constantly travel, we go here, we go there. You wake up in a different hotel and someone tells you where the restaurant is and you try and remember the number of your room.”
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Andrew Robertson claimed his tenth league assist of the season. The left back, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah have each claimed at least ten assists in the competition this season, the first time a team has had three players achieve that since 2019-20 when the same players managed it.
Arsenal have lost 25 Premier League games against Liverpool, the same as Manchester United, which is their highest tally of defeats against one club in the competition’s history.
Mikel Arteta said that Arsenal’s performance did not warrant a defeat but they needed to improve on smaller details, which also played a part when they performed well but lost 2-1 to Manchester City in January. He felt that his team should have taken the lead through either Gabriel Martinelli or Martin Odegaard before making mistakes from Cédric Soares and goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale at the back to fall behind.
“We had two big moments,” Arteta said. “From box to box, we did everything that we’d planned. What happened in the boxes was a different story, that’s where we lost the game. In the box they had the decisive moments. You have to be ahead. When you concede the goals we conceded, it becomes really difficult to win the game.
“The whole team played fantastically well. But it is details and margins to manage. I don’t think there was any other difference.”
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Arteta hit out at the Premier League for scheduling Arsenal to play against Aston Villa at lunchtime on Saturday and doing the same in April when they host Manchester United at 12.30pm three days after playing Chelsea. Arteta said that the complaints fell on deaf ears. “Thank you so much to the Premier League to do that,” he said. “Very, very helpful.”
