Liverpool: Bad losers as well as great winners as Klopp blows his top - The Warm-Up

If we have learned one thing from this extended, disrupted, bizarro season, it is that this Liverpool team are utterly magnificent winners. Arguably the best English football has ever seen. But it turns out they are also very bad losers. Hilariously so.

Last night, Liverpool were trounced by the team now 20 points below them in the table in second, Manchester City, as Kevin de Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Phil Foden all got on the scoresheet and excelled throughout a 4-0 win, suggesting that next season’s title battle may not be so much of a foregone conclusion.

Liverpool, it is fair to say were… not quite themselves. Leading to inevitable conclusions that they were suffering a major hangover after a week of partying. After Andy Robertson left a gaping goal for Foden to score in the first half, Gary Neville said:

Sadio Mane is teetotal so you couldn’t blame a seven-night streak on weak lager and WKD for his total loss of bodily function when he was put through on goal and essentially forgot to have a shot – maybe chalk that one down to sleep deprivation or too much Show Me Love.

Even Pep Guardiola knew what was going on here - “I think they drank a lot of beers in the last week. But they arrive here without beer in their blood to play against us. So that’s why I give us a lot of credit for what we’ve done”. Not that Jurgen Klopp was willing to accept any suggestion that Liverpool had not focused on the match, as he embarked on what must be the most grumpy post-match interview ever given by a manager who was won a league title in the preceding week.

Here are the selected highlights of a spat with Geoff Shreeves which had the air of an under-pressure Minister losing his rag after being doorstepped by a BBC News reporter.

Shreeves: You said before the game, we have prepared as well as we can, we won't know until it starts how it will turn out, what did you make of it and the way the game panned out?

Klopp: I think I understood your question in a manner that you weren't sure how much it means to us, this game. Or how much - what did you mean by the question?

Shreeves: Pre match...

Klopp: I know, I know...

Shreeves: 'We are all human beings...'

Klopp: Exactly, but I understood it like attitude wise. 'Is the game important to us, how will it go?' And I saw a brilliant attitude, I saw boys who were fighting with all their effort. We didn't behave like somebody who became champions a week ago. So like, it's not important. It's all good. We lacked fluidity, and that's for sure, and in some situations - 50/50 situations - they were quicker than us in mind.

Shreeves: At 0-0 did you have decent chances yourself?

Klopp: You ask me? Why you ask me if we had decent chances?

Shreeves: Do you think you had decent chances?

Klopp: We had moments, but you watch a game completely calm. Why do you ask me if we had decent chances? This makes no sense this question.

…

Shreeves: Do you have to put it into perspective at all, the fact, as we said before the game, you saw the things you wanted but you have just won the title. Do you have to apply a perspective at all?

Klopp: I'm sorry?

Shreeves: Do you have to apply a perspective at all?

Klopp: What does that mean? I don't understand [your] English now sorry. What does that mean? Do we have to...

Shreeves: In terms of perspective, you've just won the title, you said they were quicker in certain areas yourself. You were happier with your players tonight...

Klopp: If you want to lead this story in the direction that we weren't here with our focus on that game then do it. You have asked the second time about attitude. I liked my team... I said that and I thought it was clear. And you go again with that, I think we proved that point, that City is an unbelievable team.

It was all incredibly awkward and more than a little funny. And to be honest, if you yourself have labelled your team ‘mentality monsters’ then it’s probably a touch embarrassing when they turn up to the home of your biggest sporting rivals and do what Liverpool did. But Klopp’s unnecessarily angsty Q&A does at least demonstrate there will be no room for complacency at Liverpool next season…

As the two best teams in England duked it out in Manchester, a scowling Jose Mourinho was surveying the scene of a disastrous 3-1 defeat for Tottenham at Sheffield United which keeps them ninth in the table and level on points with Burnley.

As well as seeming like a potential tipping point for Spurs fans in their tolerance of Mourinho – at least that’s the impression The Warm-Up got from taking the temperature of social media – this match was also notable for an abomination of a VAR call, which ruled out a Spurs equaliser for Lucas Moura because he fell over in the build-up and the ball brushed his arm. Handball, apparently, and another bit of football’s soul shrivelled up and died.

Obviously it got Jose all angry. And like a washed-up stand-up, playing the backstreet clubs not the palladium any more, trying to hide the fact it’s been years since he was funny, he trotted out an old one-liner. Well almost.

Which recalled one of his great rants from 2014 when Chelsea lost to Villa: “I prefer not to speak. I prefer not to comment because I don't want to bring the game into disrepute and I don't want to be accused. I prefer to do what we have to do in football. In football, we have just to let it go and not to comment because if you comment, you are in trouble, and I don't want to be. I prefer not to comment because if you want to speak about big decisions, you don't just speak about the red cards. If I speak I'm in big trouble, and I don't want to be in big trouble, and if I speak I'm accused of bringing the game into disrepute.”

Meanwhile, while Mourinho goes into meltdown mode, this beautiful soul is still unemployed and still wearing Spurs merch.

Makes you think…

Liverpool might have won the league title, but this City fan had the last laugh! Yep, you definitely showed them!

The Warm-Up had to double check this morning that the memory of seeing this story crop up in its newsfeed wasn’t some surreal fever dream during the night. But no, it is true, Tranmere Rovers really did commit almost 1,000 words to an official club statement about whether the EFL turned off comments on one Instagram post, with the kind of forensic examination you’d see in a high-profile court case or, well, something important.

This gives you a flavour but the whole thing is worth a read:

"By around 12 noon, the club has screenshots to show that the comment button on the Instagram post had reappeared, but the comments which had been left early morning had disappeared. After Tranmere complained to the EFL, no further comments (so far as we are aware) disappeared.

"Tranmere requested the EFL to clarify why the ability to comment had been disabled and why comments which had been left had been deleted. The EFL initially stated that they were not aware of any issue with the Tranmere Post, and had not at any stage taken any action to either remove the ability to comment, or to delete comments. Later that day, they suggested to us that a technical upgrade being made on the previous night could have caused the problem.

"On the same day, we were advised by a journalist that he had been told by a member of the EFL’s communications team that there had been a problem with the Tranmere Post, but that they had fixed it. The journalist kept written notes of that conversation."

It’s a night off for the Premier League and that means it’s time for the EFL to come to the fore, with the first legs of the League One play-off semi-finals taking place: Portsmouth v Oxford and Fleetwood v Wycombe. Oh, and Charlton take on Millwall in the Championship. Remember to catch up on all the EFL action on Quest at 9pm on Saturday night.