Liverpool's midfield is a mess, and Man City loss proved it

MANCHESTER, England — Jurgen Klopp threw down a challenge to his Liverpool players 24 hours before their Premier League clash with Manchester City, but after a 4-1 defeat at the Etihad on Saturday, it was clear that some of them didn't even notice. Others might have done, but their bodies were incapable of accepting it.

So, they now have two huge games in the week ahead — at Chelsea on Tuesday and at home to Arsenal on Sunday — to give a delayed response to Klopp's challenge, which could not only save their Liverpool careers, but also make it easier for the club to rebuild around them, rather than without them.

Ahead of the City game, the Liverpool manager had used his pre-match press conference to admit publicly that the summer will signal a rebuild of his squad at Anfield: «After seven years, it is clear that we have to do it,» Klopp said.

While he was delivering some cold reality, rooted in an honest acceptance that his great Premier League and Champions League-winning team is approaching the end of the road, Klopp may have also delivered his message in the hope that it would spark a defiant reaction from those players with question marks over their future at the club. But in the end, Klopp only received confirmation of what he already knew.

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There were no surprises, and no performances that would have given the former Borussia Dortmund coach second thoughts.

«We were too passive, too open, too deep, too far away from anything,» Klopp said after Saturday's loss. «These kind of things cannot happen. But they happened and after that… wow! We just had to follow as they [Man City] did whatever they wanted. We were