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Why Klopp’s “mentality monsters” have been the reason for their impressive lead over Manchester City – opinion

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By Saiyed Adeem Karim

Liverpool’s mentality monsters have already put Manchester City under immense pressure

Turn your minds back to the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona. We returned from a decent showing at the Camp Nou with a 3-0 deficit.

The Reds could have given up on that and concentrated on the Premier League. But we pulled off an epic comeback to smash the Catalans 4-0 in the second leg.

Jurgen Klopp couldn’t hold back the emotions and branded the players as “mentality monsters” after the epic night at Anfield (h/t Mirror).

The Reds also were coming off an important 3-2 win over Newcastle a few days prior, with Origi scoring a late winner.

Klopp’s mentality monsters had put in some great performances last season, but our ability to keep going until the end got us some important wins. The one against Everton at Anfield is still fresh in the memory, and not to forget the own goal that Tottenham conceded too.

Those wins were lucky as we kept teams under pressure, and this attitude of playing till the end is the difference between Manchester City and us this season.

Pushing teams till the breaking point

Liverpool were at it again with their pressure on the opposition during the clash against Leicester.

The Reds were pegged back in the 80th minute after James Maddison’s equaliser and even had to take off Mohamed Salah due to an injury.

Dejan Lovren battles for the ball

In normal circumstances, a draw against Leicester would not have been a poor result. They are one of the most improved teams in the league and we were tiresome after our Champions League excursions.

However, we kept pushing till the end and won a penalty. James Milner converted that with nerves of steel, and the Reds opened up an eight-point lead at the top of the table.

Cut to Manchester City, and they have dropped unwanted points this season already. The 2-2 draw with Tottenham should have been an easy win for the Cityzens given the chances they created.

Similarly, on Sunday, they should have battered a tired Wolves coming back from Turkey in midweek.

Surprisingly, Wolves had the better chances in the first half and took a lead in the 80th minute. Instead of piling on the pressure and breaking them down to force them into make mistakes, it was City who were caught out again by Adama Traore.

Adama Traore celebrates after scoring against Manchester City

The difference between Liverpool and City this season has been huge in terms of attacking output. Pep Guardiola’s side regularly blow teams away but are becoming prone to succumbing under pressure.

They also can’t seem to push teams into making mistakes, something that we saw Dean Henderson of Sheffield United do a couple of weeks ago. We could have given up against Salzburg too after they came back from 3-0 down to 3-3 but we pushed on for the fourth goal and held on for all three points.

Against Chelsea, we did the same by holding on for the win despite the Blues putting us under tremendous pressure late on. City might end up with a mammoth goal difference compared to us, but they can’t overhaul us if we keep on winning.

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Liverpool have this incredible mentality of pushing on till the final whistle, and that has allowed us to a huge lead after just eight games into the season.