Liverpool were given both a guard of honour and a thrashing at the Etihad Stadium last night.
Pep Guardiola’s men applauded the newly-crowned champions onto the pitch before thumping them 4-0 thanks to goals from Kevin de Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Phil Foden before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain put through his own net.
City were clearly keen to make a statement of intent ahead of next season, with the fact this win only brought them within 20 points of Liverpool a sign of just how dominant the Reds have been this season.
After the match, Jurgen Klopp passionately defended the attitude of his players, especially in the face of questioning from Sky Sports where he felt the fact they had been celebrating was going to be labelled as the reason for the loss.
In truth, Klopp was right to put up resistance to the conversation going that way; to say that Liverpool were just hungover or not 100 per cent committed is a lazy analysis and not representative of what happened.
Liverpool were full-blooded in their approach, and might have opened the scoring when Mo Salah hit the post.
Their defending was extremely poor, but that appeared to be a positional problem or concerning individual errors – and Klopp clearly felt it wasn’t accurate to question his side’s attitude.
We’ve put together some Reds fans backing their boss after his passionate defence of his players. They lost a battle last night but won the war…
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