Jurgen Klopp says Liverpool are “too big” to sacrifice the rest of their Premier League campaign to focus on the Champions League - even if it represents their best chance of salvaging a poor season.
The Reds have suffered five straight home league defeats for the first time in their history and, far from mounting a strong title defence, Klopp’s men face a battle to even make the top four.
Winning the Champions League would offer a route back into next season’s elite tournament but there is still a long way to go on that front even though they hold a 2-0 lead heading into next week’s last-16 second leg against RB Leipzig.
But Klopp said he would not allow Europe to take their focus off the fight on the domestic front.
“We play Fulham and three days later we play Leipzig and we are not in the next round,” he said.
“I can’t think about winning the Champions League now as we have to go through this difficult round.
“This week we play these three games, late in the season, with two days in between, Thursday, Sunday and Wednesday, and it is tough.
“We see who we can field on Sunday and then who can play on Wednesday but it is not that we gave up on the Premier League, that will never happen.
“There is no game we can play and lose and people say, ‘Ah... look at the line-up’.
“Liverpool is too big, too many people are interested. We don’t play behind closed doors really without cameras, it is in front of our people and we feel the responsibility that in each game we have to give our absolute everything to win it.
“If that doesn’t happen then people will think, ‘That’s not enough’. We don’t change our attitude.”
