Champions League result could give Liverpool a huge boost that Jurgen Klopp wants

The final whistle had just sounded at Anfield when Jurgen Klopp went on the offensive again.

In his ongoing quest for change, the Liverpool manager has urged – or rather demanded – that Sky Sports and BT Sport come to a compromise that is best suited to the footballers they want to skyrocket this season.

Klopp’s calls for revising the five-substitute rule and scheduling televised games have become a key theme of this season like no other, but his last statement on Sunday night was deeper than ever.

“It was never from us when I mentioned it, it was from all the players,” Klopp told Sky Sports following the 3-0 victory over Leicester.

The Reds boss had just watched his patched up squad lose another player to Naby Keita and was in no mood to celebrate the result as his injury crisis somehow worsened.

“If you don’t talk to BT [Sport] we are all done.

“Sky and BT have to talk because if we keep playing Wednesday and Saturday [at] 12:30 pm, I don’t know if we will end the season with 11 players.

“I know [the broadcasters] doesn’t care and that’s the problem. We have been discussing this for a long time and nothing has happened. “

The well-being of the player, Klopp insists very sincerely, is his only thought for this well-defined point of view.

Nor can it be said that this particular position is new or arose out of the frustration of losing star players.

After all, he’s a manager who once argued “if we treat them like horses then we get horses” because of an injury to the unreported Jordan Rossiter.

Speaking in 2015, Klopp said: “I didn’t want to start my first week at Melwood with a complaint, but it can’t be normal to play three games in five days, even in England.

“What can I say? These young players are our future.”

So it’s clear that Klopp’s interest in player well-being is not a neat narrative designed as a smokescreen to seek an advantage in the minefield which is the busy schedule.

No, the German’s continued protests are sincere when he says: “I’m not talking about Liverpool, I’m talking about all the football players out there.

Klopp, like his Manchester United counterpart, Ole Gunnar Solsjaker, lamented the idea of ​​playing on a Wednesday night and a Saturday morning of the same week.

It is, however, a prospect he faces this week when he travels to Brighton for the 12.30 kick-off after hosting Atalanta in the Champions League.

“It’s a huge problem,” Klopp says. “Wednesday and Saturday 12:30 pm is a broadcast problem and nothing else.”

But perhaps the scheduling and injury headaches that have since become a headache for Klopp can be eased after Wednesday night’s game with the Italians at Anfield.

Three points against a side that were swept away so forcefully in Bergamo earlier this month takes the Reds to 12 points in Group D of the Champions League.

That would mean two of the remaining nine games of 2020 would become essentially redundant for the Reds, giving Klopp ample opportunity to rest and turn.

With Premier League games against players like Wolves and Tottenham coming in the next few weeks, the opportunity to give his big guns in the Champions League a break could be vital.

Following Wednesday’s game, Liverpool will host Ajax on December 1 before the end of the group stages in Denmark against Midtjylland eight days later.

Ajax’s failure to beat the Danes in Amsterdam means the Reds will be in the round of 16 for a fourth consecutive season, if they triumph over Gian Piero Gasperini’s men.

It could give Klopp’s injured side a much-needed respite with 10 games to go before the start of the year.