Jurgen Klopp provided a sarcastic response to a question about Liverpool’s Premier League title chances, but admitted his side are within “punching distance” after a 2-0 win at Burnley on Boxing Night.
Goals at either end of the game from Darwin Nunez and a returning Diogo Jota were enough to send the Reds to the summit of the table as they leapfrogged Arsenal ahead of their visit from West Ham United on Thursday.
Klopp, though, was in no mood to entertain genuine discussions around his team’s hopes at the halfway point of the campaign but was unable to hide his pleasure at the result at Turf Moor as Liverpool won their first game in three after home draws with Manchester United and Arsenal.
“Fantastic, I can barely keep my hands down,” Klopp said. “But [having] 42 points is really pleasing. That’s really cool.
“The first part of the season is done and it was absolutely all right what we did. Not perfect, but all right. And it keeps us no more than a point away from the top. That’s within punching distance, let me put it like that.”
Klopp also revealed the thinking behind the decision to introduce Jota after a month out with a hamstring issue. The Portugal international scored the decisive second after replacing Nunez late on at Turf Moor and the Reds boss was delighted with the forward’s cameo.
Klopp added: “You never know exactly what you can expect with the fourth game in 10 days. It is really intense, whatever the outside world thinks. Coming here and playing the game we played was absolutely exceptional.
“It’s exceptional as well that we didn’t score more goals. Actually, we did, but for different reasons they took it away. So we had to wait longer. For a long time, we caused Burnley so many problems, we played a super game. It was the last game in a really busy period you cannot really expect that, but we did. I really liked the game we played.
“But we should have scored more, that’s clear. Then the game stays open and Burnley has massive chances to score. But in the end we deserved to win that game and it was the two perfect goalscorers with Darwin and then Diogo.
“We sneaked him (Diogo) somehow on the squad list because he trained only twice and we wanted to give him extra training still and we said he could have that tonight at Burnley. Now he can train tomorrow properly and he can be ready for Newcastle which is really helpful. No injuries, all good.”
And speaking to Amazon after the game, Klopp revealed that he’s giving his players two days off after beating Burnley.
He said: “We have five days before Newcastle which feels like a long time. The boys have two days off now. I told them before the game, if we win we have two days off. I saw during the game my two days off slipping through my fingers!’
