Man City Pep Guardiola Manchester CIty
Pep Guardiola Man City

Man City have already wrapped up the Premier League title while Liverpool are yet to secure a Champions League spot for the next season.

Liverpool had won their maiden EPL title last campaign and most people expected them to come out all guns blazing this season as well. But, the Anfield outfit have really struggled to match their performances from the previous season as many pundits have dubbed this as the worst title defence in recent years.

Man City, on the other hand, are flying high as they already won the Premier League and by the end of this month they can also lift the Champions League trophy.

Manchester City are without a doubt one of the best teams in Europe right now but Jurgen Klopp has claimed that even the Etihad outfit would have found it difficult to win trophies if they had so many players missing through injuries.

The manager told the press: “I tried to explain earlier; I said when we lost our centre-halves, all of them pretty much, we broke our leg but we could still win games.

“Not always with the most convincing football, but we could still win games, we were still scoring and all these kind of things. Then, we had to – and we had to at that time – take midfielders and transform them into centre-halves and that broke our spine.

“Weeks ago, it was not clear we would play Europa League, so we’ve achieved that already. That’s not exactly what we wanted but it’s better than nothing, much better actually, and gives you a lot of good games next year.

“Ask United in the moment if they like the Europa League, they would say yes in the moment, they love to play in the final and have the chance to win it. We already did kind of a job but not the job we wanted to do.

“As I said before, this year with the injuries we had it was not a year in which you can become champions. No chance for nobody. Take out, as good as they are, the three centre-halves of City. No. Three centre-halves of United.

“No. For the whole season, pretty much. That’s how it is, it was really strange, but fight back. Accept the difficulties, fight back and make the best of it. If we win on Sunday and qualify for the Champions League then we made the best of it.”

Liverpool have been without Van Dijk, Joel Matip and Joe Gomez for most of this season and this has really caused Jurgen Klopp major headaches for Jurgen Klopp. The club had to bring in two central defenders at the start of the new year but currently, even they are sidelined with injuries.

Man City faced a similar problem last season when Aymeric Laporte missed a chunk of the campaign with a knee injury, as a result of which the Citizens finished 18 points behind Liverpool on the Premier League table.

Liverpool have had serious defensive woes this season but the main issue has been with their strikers constantly underperforming this season. Players like Sadio Mane and Firmino have been muted for almost the whole season and this has perhaps been the biggest issue which no one at Liverpool is really trying to admit.

Man City, on the other hand, have been in fine goalscoring form as always and this season even players like Phil Foden have joined into the action.

Read: Jurgen Klopp likens top-four finish to playing in a major European final.

Read: 4-3-3 Liverpool’s predicted XI vs Crystal Palace.

Read: Jurgen Klopp explains why his side were not brilliant against Burnley in midweek.

Read: Manchester City’s predicted XI vs Everton – EPL.

Read: Pep Guardiola hints the Brighton loss could have come at the perfect time.