Aston Villa boss Dean Smith says he agrees with Jurgen Klopp following Liverpool’s heavy defeat to Manchester City.
The Reds lost 4-0 to Pep Guardiola’s side at the Etihad Stadium in their Premier League clash on Thursday night.
The defeat means Liverpool are now a mere 20 points clear at the top of the table, with six fixtures remaining having already secured the league title last week.
Klopp spoke after the defeat to City that his side had chances to score but simply did not take them, and Smith saw the game the same way.
“I’ll think we will see similar to what we have seen week in, week out,” said Smith, talking about Liverpool in his pre-match press conference.
“They will be a little bit sore from getting beat 4-0, but we know that their attitude is going to be there.
“I saw it as he [Klopp] did – they had as many chances as Manchester City and their attitude was spot on.
“We have a chance, we made Liverpool work really hard [at Villa Park] and we were three minutes away from getting the victory ourselves.”
The Reds welcome Villa to Anfield on Sunday in their next match in the Premier League, with Smith’s side having a week to prepare for the trip to Merseyside.
Smith has previously spoke of his frustration of the fixture scheduling since the restart, but says that the seven days preparation for the clash against the Reds has helped.
“It’s been beneficial,” said Smith. “We had to recover from such an intense period.
“I was frustrated with the scheduling but what we’ve had is seven days to recover.”
