‘Badly wrong’: BBC pundit duo left unimpressed with Liverpool man

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Robbie Savage and Chris Sutton were highly critical of Jurgen Klopp on BBC’s 606 programme for his complaints about scheduling following Liverpool’s draw at Brighton on Saturday.

In a feisty post-match interview, Klopp hit out at the broadcasters, and in this case BT Sport, for scheduling Liverpool’s Champions League encounter against Atalanta on Wednesday night before having to play again on Saturday lunchtime for their Premier League game.

During that match against Brighton, James Milner joined a host of Liverpool players in the treatment room after he suffered a muscle injury in the second half.

But Savage and Sutton, who have played at the highest level and understand what it’s like to play a heavy fixture load, weren’t having any of Klopp’s complaints as they felt he has got the situation ‘badly wrong’.

“Footballers, we are very fortunate, aren’t we?” said Savage. “Yes, it’s two games or three games a week. When players get a muscle injury, I think we are very privileged to do the job we love. We get paid handsomely. If we were injured, we could sit at home and still get paid because we are under contract.

“So, I am not having Premier League managers moaning about muscle injures when you have got hero’s all over the country, the NHS, doing what they are doing and then we have managers moaning about two games a week. I think it was pathetic from Klopp.”

Sutton responded: “I agree with you. What I don’t get is all the clubs signed up for it. So, why is Jurgen Klopp moaning? When you are a big club, you want to play at the highest level. The big clubs are playing in the Champions League. This has happened for years. Sir Alex Ferguson used to moan about this fixture schedule.

“Ask the likes of Burnley whether they would like to have the big money to lavish out on transfer fees and player wages, of course, they would. I think Klopp has got this badly wrong.”

This is a topic that will rumble on and rumble on until there is a solution or those disgruntled teams have to deal with the situations they are in.

What’s worse is that the schedule is set to get worse over these coming weeks as the festive period kicks in, and in some cases, games will be played every two or three days.

Bringing back the five substitute rule has been muted by certain managers, but then there are others, such as Chris Wilder and Dean Smith, who are against the idea.