• Liverpool will finish fifth on the EPL log table.
• Europa League is their destination.
• Klopp saw it coming [No UCL football]
With Liverpool's fifth place finish confirmed, Jurgen Klopp says as optimistic as he is, he couldn't see his side qualifying for the UEFA Champions League, especially with Newcastle United needing just a point in their previous game to close the door on Liverpool.
"Of course in the moment when it’s then a fact that you cannot qualify for the Champions League anymore, that’s a moment where… because even when I knew after the last game they need one point or whatever, the other two teams need one point, for me it was clear they will get that point so I drew kind of a line underneath it," Klopp said as quoted by liverpoolfc.com.
"I’m a very optimistic person but in these moments I couldn’t see it."
The Liverpool boss has accepted fifth place, which, incidentally, he was not too optimistic about either.
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"If you don’t qualify for the Champions League the best possible place you can end up is fifth, that’s what we did. If you would have asked me that 10 games ago if that’s possible, I would have said, ‘No, I can’t see that, for that you have to play much better’ and all these kinds of things. That the boys did that is really good. It is not perfect. We didn’t end up in fifth place because of the last 10 games, we ended up there because of the lack of consistency before that."
Lack of consistency, is what landed Liverpool in fifth place according to Klopp.
He bemoans their horrible form after the World Cup, and says had they played the way they played in the last 10 games for the whole season, they would be telling a different story.
"But, I’m not sure, I think the last 10 games, if I’m right even after Dubai since we were in the training camp, so after the World Cup, not everything was great but the amount of points we collected since then is pretty good and if we could have done that over the whole season we would be in a different place."
One thing that Klopp is optimistic about, is Liverpool's prospects for next season, based on the spirit at Anfield towards the end of the season.
"Of course there are reasons for optimistic views because the things we showed in the last few weeks, that’s definitely the case. We have another reason for an optimistic view.
"Because of the atmosphere our people created in the last home game, after the Villa game the atmosphere in the stadium, the way the club said farewell, the day after that how Bobby [Firmino] said farewell.
"All these kinds of things are absolutely the basis for a fantastic future, so we don’t have to make it bigger than it is. It’s a football season, we didn’t deliver what everybody wanted and everybody expected rightly so. But we are still really united and that’s the good thing about it."
Liverpool travel to St. Mary's Stadium on Sunday 28 May for their last English Premier League for their season finale against Southampton. Kick-off will be at 17:30.
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