Anfield boss sure his players will handle title heat

JURGEN KLOPP last night backed Liverpool to cope with the pressure as they took another huge step towards winning their first Premier League title for 30 years by thrashing Leicester 4-0. The Reds are now 13 points clear of the second-placed Foxes and 14 ahead of Manchester City, who face Wolves tonight. Liverpool’s win was particularly impressive as it came only five days after they beat Flamengo to win the Club World Cup in Qatar. Klopp said: ‘The only thing that changes is the number. ‘It was ten points. Now, it is 13. We don’t feel it, we don’t think about it, we didn’t mention it once before the game because it’s just not interesting. ‘We know the story: never before in the history of British football has a team had a bigger lead and lost it. ‘But that sounds, in my ear, negative, so why should we think about something like that? ‘We are just focused on the next games. We have Wolves, Sheffield United, Everton, Tottenham and Man United in the next five games, so it doesn’t sound like anything is decided. ‘The number of points is absolutely not relevant. ‘We played an exceptional game against Man City. We played a super game against Arsenal. We’ve had a few good games this season. This was exactly the performance we needed. ‘A little bit less good and we would have had problems. But we had no real problems because the boys were 100 per cent in the game.’ Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers (left), who took Liverpool to within a whisker of the title in 2013-14, acknowledged that it would now be nearly impossible to deny his former club. He said: ‘They are going to be very hard to stop. ‘They are a fantastic team, their confidence is high and they’ve not lost many games over an 18month period. ‘They have enough players, enough experience and enough quality to stay focused and get the job done. But there is still a lot for us to play for. In our last two games, we have come up against the two best teams in the league: Liverpool and Manchester City. ‘Having finished where we have in the past couple of seasons, can we affect the top six? That will be our challenge going into the second half of the season.’ But Foxes goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel was angry with referee Michael Oliver for giving Liverpool a penalty for a handball against central defender Caglar Soyuncu with the score at 1-0. The home side protested strongly but the decision was not overturned by VAR. Schmeichel said: ‘We were in the game until the referee had to make himself a hero. ‘(Former referee) Dermot Gallagher will be on Sky saying it was a great decision. Caglar had less than a millisecond to react. He is desperate to give it. Once he does, they are never going to turn it over.’