Klopp does not know which Liverpool will show up against Manchester City

Jürgen Klopp has admitted Liverpool’s inconsistency means he does not know which “face” his team will show at Manchester City on Saturday.

Liverpool play City, Chelsea and Arsenal in their next three games in what Klopp has described as a defining period for their prospects of a top-four finish. Klopp believes Pep Guardiola will rightly expect to confront a Liverpool side in top form, and they boast the best record of the current top six in matches against each other this season.

But the Liverpool manager conceded there were no certainties from his team, who followed a 7-0 humiliation of Manchester United with a 1-0 defeat at Bournemouth, and said they were “100% guilty” for their league predicament.

“I would love to say: ‘How can you ask this question?’” Klopp said. “But that is the situation we brought ourselves in. That’s the situation we brought ourselves in, that we showed all these kinds of faces. All the talks we had, all the sessions we had, and since we started this week again when the players came back and I spoke to them, everything looks like it goes in the right direction and now we have to show it. And, yes, in this moment nobody can be 100% sure we will be like that but usually we are there and that’s what we will be tomorrow.”

Liverpool trail the Premier League champions by 19 points having won only one point fewer than City over the previous four seasons. Klopp believes this season’s divide is an anomaly but that Liverpool have only themselves to blame.

“We are 100% guilty for everything but things happened like they happened,” he said. “We had injuries, and of course it’s completely normal for people to say: ‘That’s not good enough.’ But that’s bollocks because of what happened in the years before. It