Roy Keane described Liverpool as “bad champions” after Jurgen Klopp’s side lost a third game in a row at Anfield to lose further ground in the Premier League title race.
Manchester City, having missed a first-half penalty, struck four times in the second half to claim a 4-1 victory which put them 10 points clear of the Reds and with a game in hand.
Keane, who won the league seven times with Manchester United, criticised the current title holders in his role as a pundit on Sky Sports.
He said: “They are making a lot of excuses. To me they’ve been bad champions and I don’t just mean today.
“You can lose a game of football but there is a way to get beaten. I don’t see that and I think maybe they have all believed the hype over the last year or two.
“We spoke about will there be some sort of drop-off, but they are playing for a big team in Liverpool. It’s as if they have won the league last year and they have all got a bit carried away and believed the hype, but in my mindset when you have won a league title, the next challenge was, ‘Can we do it again?’.”
Liverpool have been without key defenders Virgil Van Dijk and Joe Gomez for the majority of the term while goalkeeper Alisson Becker has also been missing for periods, but his return against City was overshadowed by two costly errors.
Keane continued: “You could say it is a one-off, a freak season, it is corona… Just get on with it and perform like champions – you are Liverpool Football Club. Keep performing like that and it will be another 30 years before you win the league title, trust me.
“If everyone had all their players it would be fantastic, but if you want to look at Man City for a moment and the run they have been on, you could say they are missing two of their best players (Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne).
“But they have come to Liverpool and Liverpool had a strong team out. I know the two centre-halves are missing, but they still had their best attacking players on the pitch, their best goalkeeper available, they still have international players in midfield.
“After the game Jurgen Klopp is talking about the goalkeeper’s feet being cold. I know it is tongue in cheek a little bit but it is excuses after excuses.”
Fellow pundit Micah Richards feels his old team Manchester City are in the driving seat to win the Premier League for a third time in four seasons.
“After that performance, I fully believe it is City’s title to lose now,” the ex-England defender said.
Graeme Souness was part of a Liverpool side to win five top-flight titles in six years and is under no illusions the title challenge is over for Klopp’s men.
“I don’t see them coming back from that,” the 67-year-old said. “The race is run for Liverpool and the big thing now is concentrating on getting in the top four because that is not a given.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here