Pep Guardiola responds to Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp's Man City claim: 'I don't believe him'

Pep Guardiola responded to Jurgen Klopp’s claim that Liverpool cannot catch Manchester City with a straight “I don’t believe him”.

The Liverpool manager laughed at an interviewer's suggestion that the Anfield side were keeping pressure on the Blues, after they beat Leicester on Thursday night.

The German coach played down the narrowing of the gap at the top to nine points - and Liverpool’s game in hand - by saying: "I don't think they smell our breath already, but we just try to win football games.

"I’m not sure we are in a position to get them on their toes, to be honest.”

City can open that gap back up to 12 points by winning at Norwich on Saturday night, as Liverpool face a trip to Burnley on Sunday.

But Guardiola takes Klopp’s dismissal of his side’s chances to catch City with a pinch of salt.

Asked what he thought of Klopp's stance, Guardiola said: “Just I don’t believe him.

“Absolutely (it’s possible) and he thinks the same, otherwise he wouldn’t be the competitor that he is. Of course he believes.

“In football, everything can happen. He knows that he has to win a lot of games like we know we have to win a lot of games to fight to be champions again.”

Guardiola’s guardedness heading into a trip to face Norwich is heightened by the fact that the Canaries have taken seven of the last nine points available, and also won at EWolves in the FA Cup last week.

The City boss talked in his press conference about how the old spectre of “typical City” that haunted the club - the capacity for everything to go wrong - has now been harnessed and turned into a positive.

There is no room for complacency, is his mantra.

“We can lose the league by losing against Brentford,” he said. “The same with Norwich. It doesn’t matter who you