Jurgen Klopp confirmed Liverpool's title defence is over after his side fell to a 3-1 defeat at Leicester on Saturday afternoon.
James Maddison equalised after Mohamed Salah's opener, before Jamie Vardy and Harvey Barnes scored in the final 10 minutes to subject the Reds to a third consecutive defeat.
The result left the Reds 10 points behind Premier League-leaders Manchester City, who also had two games in hand on the defending champions.
Indeed, Liverpool's primary concern at present appears to be finishing in the Champions League spots, but even that is out of their hands after their dire start to 2021.
When asked if he is conceding the league title in his post-match interview, Klopp bluntly told reporters: "Yes.
The Reds boss added: "I don't think we can close that gap this year. We have to win football games.
"Today was really good in parts. We have to avoid mistakes and misunderstanding.
"We cannot avoid VAR mistakes but in our hands we have to avoid it."
The "misunderstanding" Klopp mentioned refers to the defensive mishap in the build-up to Vardy's decisive goal.
Alisson came hurtling out of his area to deal with an aerial ball but collided with his own defender, debutant Ozan Kabak.
Meanwhile, the "VAR mistake" Klopp spoke of occurred during Maddison's equaliser, with the Reds boss insisting an error was made during the line-drawing process.
Nonetheless, Klopp claimed Leicester were "lucky" to come away with the three points as he told BT Sport : "The free kick they score the goal, no goal, yes, no and so on. We didn’t react well to that, I take that.
"Around that we really played top football in the end against a really strong side like Leicester.
"They were lucky to win today, they know that probably but in the end they finished the game, that’s fine, they deserved the three points. We know that but we have to deal with our own situations."
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