Roy Keane has blasted Liverpool for ‘making excuses’ after their defeat to Manchester City and says they have been ‘bad champions’.
Liverpool lost further ground in the league title race as City sealed a 4-1 victory at Anfield on Sunday.
Keane has slammed Klopp’s ‘excuses’ and accused Liverpool of ‘believing their own hype’ after ending their wait to win the Premier League last campaign.
‘They are making a lot of excuses, to me they’ve been bad champions,’ Keane told Sky Sports. ‘I don’t just mean today, you can lose a game of football, I can’t figure this group out.
‘I’m looking at them, even the game during the week against Brighton, Brighton were comfortable during the game, you can be beaten in a game but there’s a way to be beaten.
‘I think they’ve all believed the hype over the last year or two. We spoke about there’d be some sort of drop off, but they play for a big team in Liverpool.
‘It’s as if they won the league last year, they’ve all got a bit carried away, they’ve all believed their own hype as if they’re going to beat teams.
‘But in my mindset, when you won a league title the challenge was, ‘can we do it again?’. I never got the impression from this group, even from their interviews and the manager last year, it was almost, ‘let’s enjoy this’. Obviously it was a long wait, 30 years, but I never heard the players come out and say, ‘we want to do it again’. That’s the key.
‘They’re talking about getting in the top four. From winning the league last year to all of a sudden going the top four is where our targets our.
‘You’re talking about Liverpool, I hear people keep telling me they’re a great club and a huge club, if it’s a huge club you have to deal with setbacks. Is that not part of the game? If everyone had all their players fit all the time it’d be fantastic. If you want to look at Man City for the moment, with the run they’ve been on, you could say they are missing two of their best players.
‘They’ve put out a strong team today, they still had their best attacking players on the pitch, still had their best goalkeeper available, still have international players in midfield.
‘It’s excuses after excuses. Jurgen Klopp said Man City had a break because their game was called off, I think they missed two days training. It just goes on and on and on.
‘You want a reaction from Liverpool’s performance against Brighton, a few weeks ago it was Burnley, they go to Man United in the FA Cup and concede three. Earlier in the season against Aston Villa they concede seven, and that was with Van Dijk. You could say, ‘this is a one off’, ‘it’s a freak season’, ‘it’s corona’, just get on with it. Perform like champions.
‘You’re Liverpool, if you keep performing like that it’ll be another 30 years before you win a league title, trust me.’
