Pep Guardiola has accused Jürgen Klopp of indulging in disingenuous mind games before Manchester City’s vital trip to Anfield on Sunday.
The City manager made plain he was deeply disappointed with Klopp after his Liverpool counterpart suggested the Manchester club had enjoyed two weeks off over Christmas in the wake of a Covid-19 outbreak which led to a scheduled game against Everton at Goodison Park being postponed in late December.
Klopp implied the break – in reality, seven days without a game – helped prompt City’s recent ascent to the top of the Premier League but an unimpressed Guardiola said he expected much better from the German.
“He made a mistake – it was two months off, or three months off?” City’s manager said sarcastically. “No, four. Four months off. That’s why we are in top form right now. Jürgen has to see the calendar again. We had Covid, we had one week and we played with 14 players at Stamford Bridge.
“But maybe I’m wrong and it was not two weeks, it was three or four weeks. Tomorrow when I see Jürgen I’ll say to him: ‘How many weeks or days were we off?’”
Klopp’s loaded comments came in response to a question about coping with fatigue. “Play football, recover, train, recover, using every single minute each day,” said Liverpool’s manager, whose defending champions have slipped to fourth, with a run of three defeats in the last six Premier League games leaving them seven points behind City. “We didn’t have a break – I think City had a two-week break for Covid reasons. It’s really tough. It’s a tough season; I know for some teams it looks less.”
That inference has evidently infuriated Guardiola, who resisted the temptation to remind Klopp that whereas Liverpool enjoyed a 47-day break last summer, City were restricted to 36 days of close-season holiday.
“I’m surprised,” Guardiola said. “I thought Jürgen was not that type of manager, like other ones who are usually doing it. I didn’t expect that comment. But maybe it was a misunderstanding from him. If he sees the calendar again he will realise it was not two weeks, it was two months.”
Asked further about it, he said: “I’m not irritated. I didn’t expect it, not from him. He knows it’s not true; come on. Nobody in the Premier League has had two weeks off. Everyone knows it. Some of them, with that kind of situation, do it on purpose but I didn’t expect he would do it. I thought he’s not that type of guy, but, if he did it, OK. Maybe I was wrong.”
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An Etihad Stadium source countered Klopp’s talk of City’s supposed fortnight festive break by claiming the deferred visit to Goodison Park created just two free days: match day and the planned recovery day after.
Klopp meanwhile suggested that the weight of fixtures had left his players simply too exhausted to run properly against Brighton as they lost 1-0 to Graham Potter’s side on Wednesday. “We faced a Brighton team who had a good idea,” he said. “And we were not ready at that moment, obviously. The players wanted to [run] but couldn’t.”
from Football | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3oVheho
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