Liverpool have made their best start to a Premier League season, their total of 43 points after beating Manchester City is their highest at the halfway stage, yet they still find themselves six points behind Chelsea.
Jürgen Klopp chose to look on the bright side after Georginio Wijnaldum’s goal was enough to beat third-placed City 1-0. “Chelsea are unbelievably strong, but can you imagine how annoying it must be to win 13 games in a row and find there is still a team only six points behind?” the Liverpool manager said. “Maybe we will have to win 14 games in a row. No one really thinks we can do it, but for me to beat City was the perfect way to end the year. We knew we had to win, because we knew the earlier results. I only had to look at the guys’ faces to know Chelsea had won, but now we have won four in a row and we have to keep it going. We are in the region of the table where we want to be, we have to keep winning our games and see where that takes us.”
Neither side created many chances and the Liverpool manager would have liked to see more control from his side. “We were not quite as good in possession as we should have been,” he said. “We defended really well but we were not as confident with the ball. I think we deserved the win, though. City are a really good side and we had to stay compact.”
Pep Guardiola looked slightly deflated, unable to put much of a positive spin on a defeat his players accepted too meekly. “We started the game well, we know our record at Anfield and we wanted to play with courage,” the City manager said. “Then the first chance Liverpool have they score, so it was always difficult. It was a good cross and a good header, we had a lot of people there but I am not a guy to personalise and say we lost for that reason. We had a long time to react to going behind and we were not able to create many opportunities.”
Guardiola was reluctant to admit the gap to Chelsea is now too large at 10 points, though he did start to turn his attention to some of the other prizes on offer. “The second leg of the season starts tomorrow and there are still many things left to fight for,” he said. “We are still in the Champions League and we have the FA Cup to come. You must expect a gap to exist when one team wins 13 matches in a row. Maybe a team that can do that does not have too many weaknesses, but when you are behind all you can do is focus on your own games, beginning with the next game. We have to wake up because after this we have a game against Burnley. We have to forget about talking about big things, the second half of the league is starting and we have to think about that.”
