Jurgen Klopp blasted the Premier League schedule-makers on Wednesday, describing Manchester United’s run of three games in five days as a ‘crime’.
Having travelled to Aston Villa on Sunday and hosted Leicester on Tuesday, United take on Liverpool on Thursday night in a clash that was postponed because of fan protests at Old Trafford on May 2.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was forced to field a weakened team in the defeat by Leicester, making 10 changes as the Foxes moved nine points ahead of Liverpool in the battle for a Champions League place.
Defeat on Thursday would almost certainly kill off Liverpool’s top-four hopes, but Klopp launched a strong defence of his rival’s team selection.
‘It was the line-up I expected. Not exactly what I expected, but I knew he had to make these changes,’ said Klopp.
‘They played on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday – I said it 500 times that with all the things that happened, and the protests at Manchester that led to that Sunday, to play Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday is a crime. It is. But it is not the fault of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and the players.
‘My question to myself was, “Would I have done the same?”. Yes. You have to. We are late in the season, all the players played a lot of games. United went to the Europa League final so that means an awful lot of games and now you get Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday – that is not possible.
‘The weekend after is a weekend off for United. I am not the guy doing the schedule but my understanding when we thought how it could work out was there would be no Tuesday-Thursday game and you could have still played them all.
‘The explanation from the Premier League was that no other team should suffer because of the things that happened in Manchester. Let me say it like this – that didn’t work out pretty well.
‘But if we don’t qualify for the Champions League it is not the fault of Solskjaer and his team selection or the Premier League. It is our fault, but in this specific case I think things could have been done differently, definitely.
‘But we get more and more used to things rarely going in your favour or direction. It is just accepted as how it is.’
Earlier, Solskjaer insisted that he didn’t care if any Liverpool fans are unhappy about his decision to field a weakened team against Leicester.
He said: ‘My job is Man United and my concern is the Man United fans – what they think about my team, what they want from my team and that we come together as one and show what Man United is.’
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