Jurgen Klopp Hits Back at Gary Neville's Comments on Liverpool's Champions League Campaign

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has fired back at Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville, asking him to 'come over' and to illustrate how he should put Champions League football to one side after the former Manchester United defender suggested that the Reds should solely concentrate on the Premier League this season.

Klopp - who has now represented two different clubs in Champions League finals in recent years - was taken aback by comments that Neville had made during an interview with The Times, where he suggested that Liverpool could do without a fixture bombardment towards the back end of the season.

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The former Borussia Dortmund head coach told the awaiting media during his pre-match press conference (quoted by the Daily Mail) that Neville should come and explain to him how that would work, and questioned his views on whether he should play the youth team in European fixtures.

"It's a bit silly sitting in an office talking about football, it's different to doing the job", Klopp said.

"How would that work? We don't play Champions League or what? Gary should come over and tell me exactly how that works. How do you prepare for a game when you don't focus on it? I don't understand, do we play our kids or what?

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"I don't know what he means with that, to be honest. We have to play football. A lot of people watch our games when we play Champions League and that's our job that we do the best we can do in all these games.

"That's what we try. I don't know exactly what it means but to focus on one competition can only be if maybe you are already out of the competition nearly. If it's late in the season that you see you have a chance to do that or do this and all that stuff."