People stated that Jurgen Klopp disrespected the FA Cup after he fielded a weakened team in his side’s loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers in their third round tie.

Reds manager Jurgen Klopp told The Independent that this was’t the case and he was forced into making so many changes:

“I changed a lot because we have to, not because I wanted to.”

“After the City game we had immediately a few players who were ill with a sore throat. Pretty much all the players who weren’t here today had little problems.”

Whether Klopp meant to sacrifice his team’s chances of winning the FA Cup or not, I do feel his side might benefit from their early exit.

The club are currently top of the Premier League table. They ‘ve never won that competition in it’s current form and haven’t won a top flight title since 1990.

The club’s main goal has to be ending that near thirty year wait!

The Merseyside giants are also still in the Champions League and will want to go one better than last season and win that trophy too.

If those two competitions are the team’s main objectives for this campaign, then it’s totally understandable why they wouldn’t want the disruption of an extended run in the FA Cup.

Liverpool’s nearest rivals, Manchester City, are still in all four competitions this year. Last season, Pep Guardiola’s men won the League Cup and the Premier League. There was a lot of talk of them doing the quadruple and that speculation seem to weigh them down. Ironically it was Liverpool who knocked City out of Europe and the Reds looked the much fitter side over the two legs.

This season, City are chasing Liverpool and they could probably be doing without a fixture pile up. They’ve got Chelsea in the League Cup final and they’ve just secured their place in the next round of the FA Cup after their recent win over Burnley.

Being in all the competitions can lead to burn out as the squad struggles with the great expectations.

While City continue on their quest in the FA Cup, Liverpool have had a weekend off and more time to spend working on their tactics and fitness for upcoming fixtures.

Those extra rest days could be extremely beneficial as Klopp’s group of players can focus on their main goals and recuperate from any slight niggles that their stars might be suffering from.

Now City supporters and Pep might feel that they have a slight advantage in that winning breeds confidence and that if they keep winning then they will be serious challengers for any title. They’ve also got the experience of getting their hands on silverware.

The issues only arrive if they get beaten in a big game and it knocks their confidence as we seen with them last term.

The two main Premier League title hopefuls seem to have different strategies when it comes to plotting how they’re going to secure the main trophy.

Come May, We’ll know which team has managed their season the best!

Posted on January 28th, 2019 by scott
Filed under: Article