“There was no plan, I can swear” – Klopp defends Liverpool over gamesmanship accusations

Jurgen Klopp has claimed that there was no gamesmanship when Liverpool drew with Leicester City at Anfield. The teams went into the half-time break level at 1-1, and the ground staff was removing the snow from the end that Liverpool were to attack in the second half.

The Reds couldn’t break the Foxes down and extended their lead over Manchester City to five points, but Klopp played down the incident and added there wasn’t an ulterior motive behind the move.

The German added that the team that suffered the most was Liverpool since we had close to 80% of the possession, and the ground staff didn’t have enough manpower to clear the pitch (h/t Mirror):

“It was clear that our groundstaff tried to clear it but they didn’t have enough manpower. They realised how difficult it was when they started doing it, not before.

“There was no plan, nobody told them, I can swear, to clear only our side or our box.”

Klopp went on to say that Leicester also got an advantage since their box was cleared and it was easier to defend for them. The removal of the snow didn’t really help us all that much given we weren’t creative in the second half against Leicester.

The Reds could have extended their lead over City to seven points with the win, but five points isn’t a bad lead with 14 games to go.

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Our next fixture isn’t easy, with a trip to the London Stadium awaiting us. However, West Ham were defeated without breaking a sweat, and it is important for the Reds to come home with three points on Monday.